


Scapeless Space

by Teyke



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alien Prisons, Apparent time travel, Gen, Is Shiro nuts or is it an alien conspiracy, M/M, No spoilers for S7, Not Season/Series 07 Compliant, Post-Season/Series 06, Quintessence is weird, Shiro (Voltron) Has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-27
Updated: 2018-07-31
Packaged: 2019-06-16 23:47:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 44,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15448563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teyke/pseuds/Teyke
Summary: Shiro is trapped inside a mental prison: a psychic landscape of life just before the Kerberos mission.If his captors think this will make him give up, well. They're in for a surprise.





	1. Chapter 1

Shiro woke up with a headache.

It was a familiar feeling. So was the confusion. His doubled memories had mostly reconciled, but when he was sleeping they'd get tangled again, all in the wrong order and the wrong place, confused by conflicting impulses – his own, the witch's, and the Black Lion's. He'd wake and feel displaced, in the wrong time and body.

His brain had taken a different tack tonight. Memories of the Garrison burned hot and bright in his mind, days spent in endless simulations of everything that could possibly go wrong in the primitive systems of the most advanced human shuttle ever to be sent into space. Matt's exhausted enthusiasm at the end of each day blurred into Pidge's late-night owl-eyed look. Keith's voice over the phone merged into his voice in this morning's briefing, his irritation at needing to make yet another stop on their trip to Earth. Coran, Hunk, and Pidge had all declared it necessary, though, since they'd needed more... more...

Frowning, Shiro sat up in bed and rubbed at his face. He couldn't remember. The briefing gave way to blankness. There was an echo of adrenaline, flight-or-fight reflex, but the memory itself was – was –

He froze.

He was scrubbing a hand over his face, wiping sleep from his eyes. And he was also leaning back on one hand, supporting himself against the bed. The bed, which had actual sheets, which the Green Lion definitely didn't. He could feel the threads against his palm, his fingers, a wealth of texture that should be missing from his right side.

He pulled both hands in front of him and stared down, but in the dark he couldn't see anything.

Shiro swung himself out of bed, found the light-switch by muscle memory, and flicked it on. He knew this room. He'd spent weeks in here during pre-launch quarantine, keeping away from viruses before they all spent a year stuck on a tiny ship far from any hospital. He still knew the layout instinctively, especially with the feeling that he'd laid down in this bed to go to sleep just a couple hours ago. The manuals for today's review sessions were stacked neatly on the desk, beside his laptop, which was closed and squared in front of the desk chair. A leather jacket hung off of the back of the chair, the one indulgence he allowed himself. The bedsheets were mussed, but when he'd made it that morning he'd pulled them to military trim.

The bright fluorescent light had made him squint for a second, but he could clearly see his hands. Plural. Both perfectly ordinary, entirely human.

For a moment, there were four as his vision doubled. Both him: the ghost, the clone. Memories overlaid themselves. His brain felt like somebody had gone through and changed all the indexes. Something had messed with his head. He was missing time. He was not where he should be.

Training and control won out before he could start to panic. Shiro took another look around the room, looking for things out of place. The only light not from overhead was from the LEDs on the alarm clock, which read 04:35, like a perfectly ordinary alarm clock. The too-fresh memories in his mind insisted that everything in the room was in its right place, so Shiro made himself look again, but there were no tell-tale energy glows or cracks in the walls, no odd memorabilia from a farther place and time.

He thought about the glow of Allura's magic, the light of the Lions' eyes, the gleam of bayards and alien technology that had become home. His memories tangled, but he could still keep them separate. There was nothing at fault with the illusion, though.

“What is this?” he asked, keeping his voice level.

There was no reply.

“Hello?”

When he still got nothing, he set his jaw and opened the door.

Quarantine living quarters weren't as small as the spaceship's, but they were still pretty small, to allow for more space for simulators. They included a shared kitchen and living room, which usually wound up with papers scattered all over it each day. It should have been empty at the moment –

 _No,_ Shiro reminded himself. The only 'should' here existed from whatever had created this place.

Matt was sitting at the table, or at least a pretty good illusion of him was. He looked exactly like he had before Kerberos, noodle-thin arms, scruffy hair, and open, innocent face. Right now he was looking up from his laptop, guilt turning to surprise. “Woah. What did – ”

Shiro shoved away the bittersweet nostalgia and the tangled memories of Matt, both. This was something wearing Matt's face, interacting with him. “If this is an attempt to communicate, it's not a good approach.”

“Um,” said the alien – or phantasm or construct, whatever it was. It wore Matt's face with a look of confusion and mild hurt. “Okay, no comments.”

Good. Maybe this was just a misunderstanding. “Stop this, now.”

The alien blinked and looked down at the laptop, then back up at Shiro. “Look, I know we're supposed to be getting a solid eight hours each night, but I woke up an hour ago and I had a thought on the effects of varying microgravities on the protein folding. One night won't hurt.”

Shiro felt his expression harden and let it. The adrenaline rush of seeing two human hands where there should only be one had steadied out, and now he felt calm flowing over him, the wave cresting and reaching a zen peak, the peace he could sometimes get in combat where everything broke down into acting and reacting. Thank god. This alien might be trying to turn his mind against him, but it wasn't going to get in his way at the moment.

“Stop it. I know this is an illusion and I'm not interested. Let me out and tell me where the rest of my team is.”

The alien's eyes blinked owlishly. “Uh. Shiro? Are you sleepwalking?”

Maybe it was just a construct, after all.

Shiro turned and gave the kitchen another good look, trying to find a crack in the facade, but there was nothing he could spot. He strode out, into the corridor leading to the simulation bays. In the middle, the door to the quarantine air-lock stood large and bulky.

If he was trying to leave an illusion, he could do worse than keep going through doors. He pressed his thumb to the pad and waited as the magnetic locks began to cycle.

“What are you doing? Shiro! You can't break quarantine now – crap, you're sleepwalking or something, aren't you? Shiro, wake up! Stop it!”

 _I do want to wake up,_ Shiro thought, turning as the alien grabbed at him. A poor grab, as bad as Matt's would have been: Shiro broke away easily and shoved the alien aside. But, maybe because it was wearing Matt's face, he didn't use much force. It stumbled, but didn't trip, and then it came at him again. He raised an arm defensively and realized too late that actually it had been aiming for the emergency lockdown beside the door. It pushed the red button, the locks froze, and then Shiro threw it into the opposite wall, away from him.

“You can't keep me here,” he told it. “I will get out.”

“Okay,” said the alien. It was holding one of Matt's shoulders, as if in pain, and Matt's voice was high, scared. “Calm down. Shiro, ow.”

“It doesn't matter how much you mess with my head. Even if I can't get out on my own, my team will come for me.” He considered his arm. It looked real, just like everything else in this place. He could feel his fingers when he made a fist. It was all wrong. Phantom sensations, no doubt stuck in his head the same way the alien had pulled his memories of this place to the fore.

It was an illusion. His mind determined his reality. Shiro focused on the heft of alien metal, and slammed his fist through the illusion of the door.

Or, well, that was what he tried to do. His hand hit the door and the door held. White-hot pain lanced up his arm, and he cried out with the shock of it. It wasn't like the agony he'd felt when the Galra arm began to consume him. This was the sickening pain of broken fingers.

Fake. Shiro didn't _have_ those fingers anymore, hadn't for a long time. He snarled, and hit the door again, and again, the pain rising to a crescendo that reminded him of the arena, of _get up, get up, get up or die_ and the absolute conviction that he refused to die _here_. The illusion was starting to break apart: crackling voices echoed from the wall, demanding that he stop. The fake-Matt grabbed his arm, and Shiro paused to turn and throw it halfway down the hall. Another fake appeared, this one wearing Commander Holt's appearance, but Shiro ignored it.

The airlock was cycling. The freeze was off. Shiro waited.

Instead of a bright light and wakefulness, he was met with a security team rushing at him.

Shiro grabbed the first and threw it at the second, tripping up both. The third and fourth wore the appearances of scientists he recognized, people he hadn't seen since the launch, but he slammed them both into walls without remorse. This wasn't really a security team. It was just whoever the illusion thought would be plausible. None of them fought with any more skill than he thought would be plausible, either. He kicked in the kneecap of a fifth, darted out of the way of a sixth, and nearly got hit by a pair of taser leads.

He kicked the taser out of the hands of a seventh, but the airlock hadn't been large to start with and now there were bodies groaning on the floor all around him. He nearly tripped over a leg. Three more fake scientists entered, two of whom he recognized as fellow martial-arts enthusiasts. He blocked a grab with his broken hand and paused a fraction of a second too long as the all-too-real pain stole his breath away. One of the fakes got in close, and he had to turn to engage, and for a moment his bad side was exposed to the doorway.

The second taser got him, and he fell, convulsing. He landed on his broken hand. The world whited out.

He came back to himself a moment later, teeth bared and furious. This wasn't how he died. This wasn't how he died!

But there was a multitude of bodies pressing him down, piling on him, and no matter how he twisted and thrashed he couldn't pitch them off of him, couldn't make his trembling muscles obey him well enough to toss them away. He only had human arms. Alien voices clamoured at him, running together into a sonorous din, as unintelligible as the bloodthirsty screams of the arena crowd. Shiro snarled and bucked, trying to get up, trying just to draw blood, make a distraction, create an opening, but they didn't let go. They held him down, held him to the table – _no_ , this wasn't real. He couldn't move. His limbs were lead.

The illusion blurred. They were changing the scenario on him. It was all fake. He fought the rising darkness, certain that it held no escape, but it rolled over him and swept him under.

  


  


Shiro woke up with a headache, and a strange, sickening grogginess clinging to him.

Neither headache nor grogginess was unusual. The Black Lion's soul spread across all of space and by the time Allura had pulled him back, so had his, nearly: he'd been strung out across a universe too vast to hold his soul together, fading into the infinite. She'd scraped up as much of him as she could, even detangling his bond with the Lion in her efforts to gather every last piece, but so much was lost. His mind and memories came through intact, more or less, but his quintessence ebbed low.

In this body he had likewise been guttering, ruined and used up by the witch and the suicide weapon she'd made of the arm. Between his two selves he'd had barely enough to pull together into one complete being. They'd never have survived separately.

The physical results were that, even now, Shiro was sleeping a solid ten vargas a night and spending a good half of every day napping.

But the sleepiness he felt these days was a comfortable thing, like waking up on a weekend morning in his childhood home and knowing that he could roll over and catch another hour before he had to get up. He was safe, his friends were safe, they were all together, and he had time to rest. Black cradled him and kept him from harm. Sometimes he'd wake with Keith curled up against his back, or even with an arm thrown over his waist, and he'd take a quiet moment to luxuriate in being warm, loved, and horizontal, with nothing pressing him to get up.

This, on the other hand, felt more like waking with a hangover.

Shiro cracked his eyes open. Industrial-white, bright light stabbed at him, and he scrunched them shut again as his headache redoubled and began throbbing in time with his pulse. This definitely felt like a hangover. Had he been – he hadn't been supposed to go down to the planet, but this wasn't the Green Lion, nor Black –

He'd been trapped in a simulation. It came rushing back to him: the odd freshness of the memories of the Garrison, now crowding the fore of his brain again, but not so strongly.

The ceiling overhead was flat, bright and covered in fluorescent lights. Somewhere to the side, something beeped quietly and regularly. Surreptitiously, he tested his limbs, and was brought up short by restraints. He couldn't move his right hand much at all: it was entirely wrapped up in something thick and restricting.

Bile rose in his throat, propelled by panic and the nauseating feeling of trying to move broken fingers. Great. He wasn't just strapped to a table, he was strapped to a table in the simulation. He made himself take deep breaths and try to focus. He'd gotten out of worse situations. His friends would come for him.

Shiro opened his eyes and tried to find somewhere to look at that wasn't the lights. He was restrained, but his head wasn't held immobile, and he could get enough of a look to see that this was supposed to be a hospital room. A single door stood about fifteen feet away, and monitoring equipment was lined up on wheeled platforms beside the bed. He was dressed in pyjamas, one of the pairs he'd taken into quarantine with him. His right hand was held in a cast – could he even call it his hand, when it wasn't? The right arm was strapped down in several more places than his left. His legs were restrained at knee and ankle both.

The door opened with a click and revealed an alien wearing the face of Dr. Bensham, the lead for the Kerberos team's medical support crew. She wore a white lab coat and a smile that Shiro assumed was supposed to be reassuring.

“You're awake,” said the alien. It crossed the room and pulled up a chair beside the bed. “Do you know where you are?”

“A lab somewhere, if I had to guess,” Shiro replied, not quite managing to keep all his sarcasm back.

“You're in the Garrison's medical wing,” she corrected him. “Do you remember what happened?”

“Yes, I do. I remember everything. Let me _go_.”

“Can you tell me what you remember, first?”

“You stuck me in this simulation and tried to convince me it was the Garrison. It's not working. I remember who I am, I remember Voltron, and if you don't let me go before my friends get here, Voltron isn't going to be happy with you.”

The alien blinked, looking taken aback, but rallied. “What do you mean, a simulation?”

“I know this is fake. Let. Me. _Go._ ” Damn it. Despite himself his voice was shaking, and he couldn't resist giving a violent yank at the restraints. “What do you even want from me?!”

“Shiro, calm down. Breathe! Come on, Shiro, take a deep breath, hold it.” Ingrained attitudes towards doctors and the chain of command, so much stronger in the memories they'd stirred up, worked against him. He breathed in and held it, then breathed out when she did, too. “You're safe here, Shiro. We want you to be okay. Breathe. There you go. You're okay. Can you tell me what you mean by 'fake'?”

He let his head slump back against the pillow and closed his eyes. Oh, god. “Stop it.”

“I want to help you. Please answer the question.”

“This isn't the way to make friends.”

“Please, Shiro. Help me help you.”

He tried flexing the fake fingers. Pain shot up from them, feeling very real but also nauseating, the complete opposite of grounding. The alien protested. “Shiro, don't hurt yourself. Your fingers are broken. Do you remember breaking them?”

“I'll punch as many doors as I have to, to get out of here.”

“Shiro – ”

 _My friends will come for me_ , he reminded himself, and he said it out loud, too, but he couldn't stop himself from struggling harder. The alien tried to talk him down again, but its voice was blending with other memories, now, and panic spiked through his brain, out of control.

This time the illusion showed him a drug-filled syringe, something to explain the way the world drifted sideways and stopped making sense, until even the fake limbs stopped obeying him and he floated, helpless, aliens pleading with him and screaming at him, all of them speaking with Haggar's voice, ordering, _Give in_.

 _No!_ Shiro screamed, and fell out of his mind for a while.

  


Shiro woke up with a headache and the awful knowledge that he was still stuck in the simulation.

He was so tired. Foggily, he wondered what this was doing to his already pitiful quintessence. Nothing good, no doubt. Poor Allura would have to try and fix him all over again. The illusion wouldn't grant him the luxury of curling in on himself. He fell down through the haze it had become and pictured it in the deepest reaches of his mind, more real than anything in the simulation. He would survive. His friends would find him.

  


The aliens kept talking to him. They told him stories that they must have picked out of his mind, like they had the Garrison, and then ones that became increasingly made up and cruel, stories about a successful Kerberos launch that he hadn't been on, new programs at the Garrison that had never seen fruition while he'd still been around to enjoy the benefits. Time began to blur together, and the simulation didn't give up. An alien wearing the face of his old thesis adviser spent what felt like hours talking about a new experimental stealth fixed-wing, trying to tempt him with the memory of flight. Sometimes they did things to the fake hand, eventually taking the cast off and trying to force him to move fingers that weren't his own. All of them kept repeating things that he needed to do, things they wanted him to do, insisting that it was for his own good and that they wanted to help him.

 _Then let me go_ , he tried to say, but he'd fallen so far inside of himself that he couldn't be sure that the words formed.

  


He kept reaching for the Black Lion, but he couldn't manage to concentrate. The simulation wouldn't let him, mimicking the effects of the drugs the aliens kept injecting him with as if they were real. Unreality warped and shifted around him. The lights danced, tiny neutron stars in his own personal galaxy.

  


He was so tired.

  


He couldn't wake up.

  


_Shiro_ , said a familiar voice. _Shiro, wake up. Shiro?_

 _I'm here_ , he wanted to say. _Keith, I'm here_.

_What have they been doing to you? I'm getting you out of here!_

Vague sensations. A weight was suddenly lifted off of his forehead, something he could identify only as smooth metal when his thoughts clicked into – not quite focus, but all of a sudden he could feel adrenaline coursing through his veins, a rush that he hadn't felt in – ages. He blinked open gummy eyes and saw Keith leaning forward. “Shiro!”

It wasn't Keith.

He sank back against the bed, batting away the alien's hands when it reached for him, and then blinking dully at his own hands – hand, only one was his – in surprise. He hadn't noticed when the simulation had removed the restraints. It wasn't like it needed them. Disappointment halted the adrenaline rush in its tracks, and he drooped. “Stop it. Stop wearing his face.”

The alien paused. “Shiro, it's me.”

“Stop lying. I'm not gonna tell you anything.”

“Shiro...”

The door burst open. More aliens poured in. “Cadet! What the hell do you think you're doing?”

Shiro put his arm over his eyes and did his best to tune out the staged argument that followed. It was harder to tune out not-Keith's voice, rising in anger and fear, than the other alien voices. He winced when he heard a punch thrown and connecting, and then there was a lot more shouting.

Alien faces clustered around him in the aftermath. One of them put the metal band back on his head and energy flowed out of him like water, leaving him drifting on a lake of calm. Another snatched it away again, shouting something that Shiro couldn't follow. His mind roiled and he scrunched his eyes tighter shut, trying to will away the dizziness, but it was so hard.

 _Help_ , he wanted to say, and it actually came out, a croaking whisper. “Keith, please. Help.”

There was a quiet in the hubbub. “Shiro, we're trying,” said one of the aliens. “Shiro? Can you hear me?”

He was so tired. How long had he been trapped in here? Keith hadn't really come. His friends hadn't come.

Tears came, and the haze in his head was too much. He couldn't stop them. He rolled over and curled in on himself and cried, and the aliens draped a blanket over him and let him.

  


He reached for Black again and failed. His soul was too weak, and his mind too hazed. He couldn't do this.

  


“Shiro, please,” said the alien wearing Keith's face. It had been escorted in by one of the doctors. “Just.... say something.”

_I need you._

  


_Shiro!_

  


He couldn't get out on his own. He'd been trying for what felt like months. His friends hadn't come. They would come – but they hadn't, and he had to get out of here. He couldn't get out of here. He _would_ get out of here.

_Patience yields focus._

He couldn't focus past the haze that the simulation made of his mind. He couldn't keep fighting it head on. He needed to try another way.

_Patience._

He had to start playing along.


	2. Chapter 2

“Keith,” he said, the next time an alien came by. Speaking made him cough. “I wanna see Keith.”

Speaking got results. There was a flurry of questions, which Shiro mostly ignored, but he drank the water they offered and he let them help him sit up. God, he hoped his body in the real world wasn't this weak. The illusion and the drugs – or the illusion of drugs – stretched time out into one smooth moment, and he let it mostly wash over him. It was too hard to keep track of it all. His brain felt as weak as the fake body they'd given him.

Keith – not Keith, it wasn't Keith – was there, suddenly. Shiro reached out and grabbed his hand.

“Shiro?” he asked, his voice so true to life that Shiro wanted to get angry at the alien for stealing all this out of his head, but he didn't have the energy.

Instead he asked, “What happened?”

“You've been sick. You... didn't know where you were. Shiro? Are you here now?”

“I'm here,” Shiro said, and couldn't help the way that his voice cracked over the words. They felt _wrong_. He couldn't give in – he wasn't, he wasn't conceding. He was going to get out of here, even if he had to play along for a while.

“Get better,” Not-Keith said. He sounded more tentative than he should. When he'd been younger, he'd always been certain in his pessimism. When he'd come back with his mom and his wolf, that had changed, becoming the kind of grounded focus that sprung from an inner core of strength. Shiro had been leaning desperately on him these past few weeks. 

“I – I'll try,” said Shiro, and gripped Not-Keith's hand tighter.

 

The aliens started letting him keep the headband off. A mood balancer, they called it, one that blocked the brain from being affected by hormones like adrenaline. Shiro could just vaguely recall hearing of something similar, but he'd never seen one in real life, so the aliens must have made up most of it from whole cloth. Or maybe they had similar technology. It must seem ridiculously primitive compared to whatever was letting them crack open his mind and memories. Drugs must seem even more primitive.

None of them let on anything of the sort whenever they talked to him, and they tried talking to him a lot. He left his answers short and confused.

“Everything's been really blurry.”

“I don't know.”

“I woke up and everything was just. It was all _wrong_. Everybody seemed wrong. Alien. Like everybody had been replaced by body-snatchers. Everything's been so off.”

“Do you still feel that way?” asked one of the psychologists, Not-Dr. Nguyen.

Shiro figured he was pushing his luck enough as it was with his sudden capitulation. “Sometimes,” he admitted.

She nodded sympathetically. “You recognized Keith. You asked for him. Do you remember that?”

“I... I don't know.” He looked at her and allowed some of the helplessness to show in his expression. “Maybe? Everything's so jumbled.”

“Alright. There's a couple of mental exercises I'd like you to practice. If things start feeling wrong again, then you can use these to ground yourself and remind yourself what reality is...”

They kept prescribing medications: in pill form, now, instead of by an intravenous line, although they had to know that neither mattered when they could just strum his brain like a guitar string and send it out of tune. He wanted to throw the meds away, but didn't dare, not yet. He took them and put up with the fuzziness and the mood swings, and did the exercises, which sounded plausible enough that he almost felt betrayed: they could have been useful if this really _was_ reality. There was physical therapy, too, for the wasted body they'd put him in.

“You went catatonic for quite a while after the initial incident,” Not-Nguyen told him gently. “We tried a number of different therapies to bring you out of it. The mood balancer probably wasn't the best idea.”

“How long?” he asked, still exhausted from his latest session of physical therapy, which had been no more strenuous than walking around his room, once, escorted by a hovering med-tech.

“Five months,” she said, and Shiro closed his eyes and prayed, _Please, not in the real world, please._

If his friends hadn't come for him, then what had happened to them?

_I'll get out. I'm going to get back to them, no matter where they are._

 

When he could get around the room twice without needing a break to catch his breath, they moved him to a different room, this one with an attached bathroom, and, thank god, freedom from the a catheter. (Some parts of the simulation's dedication to appearing real were just petty. Ugh.) It even had a mirror. He caught sight of his reflection in it and froze.

“Ah,” said Not-Nguyen, following his gaze. “I'm sorry, I should have gotten you a mirror earlier. Hair can turn white due to stress, and your episode, and all the events leading up to it, placed a lot of stress on your body.”

Sure. Stress turned hair white. Shiro had thought that before, about the hair in his forelock that had gone pure white, but the current silver colour was something else entirely. Something the simulation had gotten wrong. Relief made him weak-kneed and he had to clutch at the doorframe, which made Not-Nguyen cluck and the aides cluster around him.

Every other day, Not-Keith came to see him, and they sat together, sometimes talking and sometimes not. Shiro preferred when Not-Keith talked, awkwardly telling him about his coursework (too easy) and classmates (too hard). It made it easier to remember that this wasn't real, it wasn't Keith, when Shiro could occupy his brain by picking apart everything Not-Keith said and trying to figure out what the aliens were angling for, what their real goal was, here.

 

Two weeks in, they started bringing him to one of the gyms for his physical therapy sessions. He sat in the wheelchair as they took him down the hall and considered the deserted hallways. This was definitely a simulation of the Garrison, all right, but there should have been more people around.

“Where is everybody?” he asked later. “The hallways were empty.”

Not-Nguyen smiled. “You noticed? That's excellent, Shiro. A very good sign of your situational awareness.”

“It was really obvious.”

“It's still a good sign. To answer your question, we had this portion of the medical wing closed. We don't want to overwhelm you with too many people, too soon.”

He shifted uncomfortably in his bed, and decided to take the opportunity and push it. “Why not just move me to a regular hospital? I've never heard of anyone kept in long-term care at the Garrison before.”

“No,” Not-Nguyen agreed, “but you're a special case, Shiro, and the Garrison does have some of the best medical facilities in the world. For a time we were all really worried about the possibility of there being an environmental reason behind your episode. There was also a great deal of concern about how to best act in your best interests, considering that, in your Living Will, the Garrison has legal responsibility for you in the civilian sense as well as for military purposes. Until the lawyers sorted it out, we didn't want to move you anywhere.”

He pretended to think over her words, although they didn't require much thought: specious, and thin. Sure, he didn't have a legal next-of-kin designated, he'd signed everything over to the Garrison, but the 'Garrison' wanting him here just meant the simulation wanted him here.

“I'll admit, there was some pressure to make sure it was kept quiet,” Not-Nguyen added. Perhaps she saw his scepticism. “You made a number of fans during the Kerberos publicity tour and there were security and privacy concerns. And given how extreme your episode was, the Garrison was also very interested in having you near at hand so we could figure out what happened, and prevent it from happening to anyone else.”

“But it hasn't happened to anyone else. Has it?”

“Quarantine is hard on a person, even without considering the exceptionally stressful schedule you'd been dealing with. This isn't a personal failing on your part, Shiro.”

“It's my brain,” he pushed, curious to see what she'd say.

“If you hammer the brain, it'll break, just as an overstressed steel beam will. We _are_ looking at re-doing screening measures, and the ways we treat astronauts in quarantine and on mission prep. And we might still be able to better pinpoint the reason for your episode. You've already come such a long way.”

“Sure,” he said.

 

He slept a lot. The quintessence-exhaustion was barely better than it had been before all this started, which left him hopeful that time outside the simulation was progressing a lot slower – but as weeks went by he _did_ notice an improvement, and that was bad. That meant time was passing at all. He couldn't let himself dwell on it, so he wore himself out doing extra physical therapy exercises, which got him lectures from the doctors, but he made up a reason about movement helping to anchor him in reality, and that got him some lenience. In reality, he just wanted the simulation to stop trying to convince him his body was so damn weak. He hated the feeling.

Not-Nguyen gave him more exercises, and he spent a lot of time with his eyes closed, pretending to do them and instead trying to still his thoughts, to sink into meditation and that place where he could call for the Black Lion. He complained about feeling fuzzy-headed, and they changed up and dialled back the medication some more.

They started allowing visitors other than Not-Keith. A couple aliens wearing the faces of old classmates, although he'd never actually been that close to anyone in his year. Members of the ground crew for the Kerberos mission. It was mostly awkward, because if he deflected too much then Not-Nguyen called him on it after, and he wound up lying in bed with his face in the pillow wishing he could just do push-ups until his brain blanked out. But if he tried that, the simulation would have Not-Nguyen back in an instant. She might be referring to his 'episode' as a past thing, but there was a camera in both the main room and his bathroom, and he always had an escort when he went anywhere else.

It'd have driven him nuts long before, but he knew how to be a prisoner. Besides, he'd already determined he couldn't leave this prison just by walking through a door.

 

“Do you remember what happened at the airlock door?” Not-Nguyen asked him.

“It... I remember feeling like it wasn't real. I had to get out. So I punched the door. And then, it hurt, but it wasn't real, so it didn't matter.”

She nodded, but let the silence hang. She wanted something else. He looked at her and then at the hand, trying to figure out what it was. They'd been over his so-called feelings of unreality plenty of times, everything that had happened then and in the days leading up to it. She'd have tried to psychoanalyze his dreams if he hadn't claimed that he didn't remember any. What was he missing... oh. “I guess it must have scared... Matt.”

It took a beat before she picked up the thread. “How do you feel about that?”

“Same as everything else about that time. I went temporarily insane, none of it's going to make sense.” He paused and hesitated. “I hope I didn't hurt him. It all got blurry after punching the door.”

“A couple bruises. He's okay, and he was fine in time for the re-scheduled launch. Do you remember me telling you about that?”

“Not really.”

“They moved the launch to the back-up date. You were still in early quarantine, so it was still in the window. Everything went fine.”

“Oh.” He supposed he ought to say something else. “No wonder he and Commander Holt haven't been around to say hi.” Thank god. Keeping Not-Keith firmly in his brain as Not-Keith, while not letting on that Shiro knew he wasn't Keith, was hard enough. He couldn't bear to have to do it with any more people he cared about. But, of course, the simulation was expecting him to care about the fakes.

“When they left, you were still catatonic,” Not-Nguyen said. “Do you want to see them?”

He shrugged. “Doesn't matter, does it? I can't.”

“Yes, but do you want to?”

He stared at his hands, trying to figure out what the heck she wanted. “They saw me lose it. I'd never – I would have thought I'd never hurt anyone like that, but especially not a member of my crew. I don't... know if I can face Matt.”

“He doesn't blame you. He was very worried for you.”

Another flaw in the simulation: if he was that worried, he could have sent a message from the shuttle. A couple light-hours distance meant that a conversation was out of the question, but messages travelled back and forth regularly. Shiro didn't point this out, when it was working in his favour anyway. He kept his expression neutral and played along.

 

Physical therapy continued. His twice-daily sessions with Not-Nguyen continued. The doctors praised his progress but continued to worry over him sleeping twelve hours a night, which none of the medication should have been causing. There were more medical tests of every kind as they tried to isolate the issue, and they'd scanned his brain enough that if they hadn't already wired his brain into in a simulation of reality, they probably would have been able to by the time they were finished. To Shiro's dark amusement, the idea of mystical soul-energy depletion being the cause was never suggested. He wondered if the aliens really were confused about it, or just pretending. It was possible they didn't actually know.

His cooperation was rewarded: he stopped feeling quite so pathetic in the gym. He expressed boredom and they supplied him with books to read. Not-Keith brought him cheap paperbacks from the local town's library, and Shiro started going through a book a day, amusing himself with the thought of the aliens scrambling to write that many Earth-based romance novels. Unless they were just fogging his mind while he thought he was reading it, leaving him with vague memories of the plots... he started re-reading, in paranoia, but couldn't put the thought from his head, and eventually gave up on it entirely. He went through science magazines, revisited old textbooks and some new ones, idly wondered how much the aliens had had to dumb down the physics. The equations made sense to him, but he wasn't Hunk or Pidge. He wouldn't be able to break apart the simulation by recognizing that they'd managed to put _L_ in the wrong units, or find some other esoteric error to reveal the wrongness in this world. But it was at least something to do.

They let him go outside, with Not-Nguyen and Not-Keith beside him, and watch the sunrise.

He tried to keep his face blank, but the medication they had him on was still too strong, and he felt tears slip down his cheeks as he watched colour spill over the desert.

“I'm never going to get to fly again,” he said to Not-Nguyen later that day. She'd been pushing him since the trip outside, and he wanted to say something to satisfy her. Even knowing to his bones that it was fake, the fresh air smelled so real that he really, _really_ wanted outside again. Maybe just as badly as he wanted _out_ , period.

“Probably not into space,” she agreed. “You're going to have to decide where you want to go from here. There are certainly still options at the Garrison that are open to you, but it's your decision.”

“I'll think about it,” he said, and she left the session looking pleased.

There was a series of interviews with three other psychologists and one of the Garrison doctors, and afterwards they removed the cameras from his room and bathroom. He gave it a couple days, not certain if the simulation was trying to pull a 'gotcha!' on him, and then started flushing the meds down the toilet. Withdrawal took two anxiety-ridden weeks as his nerves, screaming for prescription-based calm, had him jumping at everything and he sweated through trying to appear normal, and then it was over, and the only thing he could _feel_ fogging his head was the quintessence-exhaustion and his own damn demons.

The simulation put the lie to that every time he looked around, but he'd take what he could get.

The doctors eased up. He visited the officers' mess sometimes, and was given free access to the gym. He spent the next morning meditating alone on the roof-top in the predawn, and with a sudden clarity of insight, managed to hold himself back from reaching for Black.

His quintessence was exhausted, and Black was demanding. Every time he reached for her, he exhausted himself further. Like his alien physical therapists had lectured him about, when he overdid it he just set himself back. For this to work, he was going to have to let himself heal. He was going to have to wait for real time to pass.

 _No_ , he thought bitterly, and ended up sitting there with his face in his hands until the sun was over the horizon and the heat started baking him into somnolence. Then he got up.

“Patience yields focus,” he whispered, not caring if the simulation heard. He wouldn't let it win.

 

The day after that, Not-Iverson showed up.

Shiro had been expecting a Not-Iverson to show up for a while. It was strange that it hadn't already happened: Shiro was living at Garrison medical, on the Garrison's dime, and no matter what Not-Nguyen said about the Garrison wanting to study what happened to him, the Garrison wasn't a charity and his 'episode' was obviously a unique case with, still, no easily identifiable cause. There was only so far the simulation could push it before it started getting absurd.

He wasn't expecting a job offer.

“You're eligible for retirement on medical grounds. No one would contest that,” Not-Iverson said gruffly. “You're young, and I'm sure you'd have a lot of opportunities waiting for you outside these walls. But you're also one of the best instructors to ever take a rotation here. If you weren't an even better pilot we'd have tried to push you onto that track from the beginning.”

Being a fighter-class pilot again was entirely unrealistic. The simulation seemed to realize that much, at least. But it definitely wanted him to stay at the Garrison.

Why? Earth technology was so primitive compared to any planet that had already managed to become part of the wider universe. What could the simulation possibly gain from having him stay here? If he could figure it out, maybe he could figure out how to end it.

“Thank you, sir. It's not an offer I was expecting.”

Not-Iverson snorted. “You should have been. You're the only one who can get that Kogane kid to behave. Keep it in mind, Lieutenant. If you leave, he's going to get himself expelled – nearly did already. Losing all that potential would be a waste.”

“He'll figure out self-control in time,” Shiro muttered. “He's been learning it.”

“Thanks to you. That's the kind of work I want you to keep doing.”

 

On a whim he asked Not-Keith to take him out to the local town on the Garrison's next rest day. The doctors wouldn't approve him for driving yet, but he'd given Keith the keys before leaving for quarantine and Not-Keith had them now and was as thrilled to drive as always. Shiro sat behind him and hung on for dear life as Not-Keith took them down a shortcut through the canyons, banking off rock faces and sending them into free-fall more than once, as in tune with the bike as Keith was when piloting Red, when piloting Black. Shiro clung on and whooped at the feeling of wind and sand and dust, letting himself have the moment, just for a little while, before they crossed back onto the main road and he reminded himself of all he stood to lose if he started giving in.

“Where do you want to go?” Not-Keith asked him, as they drew near to the town.

“Just around.”

Not-Keith, like Keith, didn't press, although he probably found it boring, cruising down the streets past stores, restaurants and condos. They took a circle around the outside of town, past houses and the couple of neighbourhoods that had sprung up here, housing families of the people who worked at the base full-time. Shiro checked every building wall and window, trying to find some sort of flaw in the reflections, but the only one that appeared he already knew about.

“You really don't want to stop anywhere?” Not-Keith asked finally. He sounded uncomfortable.

Shiro considered asking for the airport. Garrison Town didn't even have its own name. He could hop on a plane, catch a transfer, and try and spot irregularities in the complicated streets of Tokyo, the towers of New York. What if he tried to go somewhere he'd never been? Australia, South America – he'd never gone scuba diving, or visited the jungle before. He'd always wanted to, if in a vague, pallid way compared to his overwhelming need for the stars, and by the time the Galra had burnt that hunger out of him, it'd been too late.

Would the simulation try to make it up from what Shiro knew about those places, from travel blogs and old geography classes? Or would it present him with some alien landscape and tell him that any weird differences were just in his mind? Or would it just come up with some reason to yank him back to where it wanted him to be? It wouldn't have to try hard – he had leave to visit town, not leave the state. The medical flag on his passport might even prevent him from boarding the plane at all.

Being shown hallucinatory landscapes was hardly appealing, anyway. He abruptly felt exhausted at the thought of trying, seeing fractals, and being told it was all in his head. He needed to figure out what these aliens wanted from him, and he needed to reach the Black Lion. He had a plan: he needed to stick to it, not go haring off for the illusory Andes because he thought it was taking too long. He needed patience.

“Shiro?”

He'd been silent too long.

“Nah. Just wanted to get out, see the place. Thanks, Keith.”

“Okay,” said Not-Keith, and took them back.


	3. Chapter 3

Visiting the town became some sort of watershed moment. Shiro was assigned back to his old quarters, although he still had to visit medical daily. He ate in the mess and tried to be friendly but distant, so as to avoid the trap of friendship. Most of the aliens were exactly like regular humans. He wondered how many of them there really were: surely not as many as one per person at the Garrison. They had to be playing multiple roles, or maybe some of them were programs. Maybe all of them. Maybe they were alien artificial intelligences, and existing in mindscapes like this was normal for them.

They certainly managed to give the impression of all being real. Most were nice to him, or oblivious, or at least sympathetic. He caught some whispers in the halls behind his back, about his mental breakdown, but ignored them. Not-Nguyen seemed to think he was keeping too much to himself, but trying to constantly remember that they were all fake was exhausting. If that made it seem like he was having difficulty adjusting, so much the better: he didn't want to make them suspicious by pretending to _too_ miraculous a recovery.

When they let him have his licence back, deciding that he'd been stable for long enough on his current medication regime even if he was still sleeping way too much, he started taking long drives out through the heat of the desert. Sometimes he had to take Not-Keith along, for appearances' sake, but usually he went by himself. Aside from reading and exercising, there was little else for him to do: they were in the middle of the year, and Iverson didn't want him to start taking classes until next.

He made sure never to go further than fifteen klicks from the Garrison walls. He had no idea what the simulation could possibly gain from knowing where the Blue Lion _had_ been – he couldn't even remember exactly where to find it, for that matter – but he didn't want to risk it.

  


“So you _have_ been practising,” said a voice, and Shiro froze.

He'd taken to finding practice rooms while other people were busy, trying a few different times until he realized that if he really wanted the place to himself, he was going to have to give up on his predawn meditation sessions on the roof. The gyms all filled up about an hour before the general mess opened, but two hours before that they were deserted. And it beat doing forms on the roof, though he did retreat up there sometimes anyway.

He dropped his arms and straightened as he turned, letting the kata remain unfinished. “Ryo-sensei.”

Not-Ryo snorted. “Can't call me that when you won't come to any of my classes, Shiro.”

“I've been occupied,” Shiro said dryly.

“Sure, sure. But not occupied enough to only practice on your own. Start coming to classes again.” Not-Ryo picked kicked off his shoes and wandered onto the mats, sticking his hands into his pockets. He was shorter than Shiro, always had been since Shiro had gotten his last, late growth spurt and begun towering over nearly everybody, and he was the best close-quarters fighter that Shiro had ever had the honour of being taught by. Cadets didn't usually get to be in his advanced classes: he taught other experts and instructors. Shiro had never really wanted to be a soldier in the way that Ryo had been, but he'd loved the discipline, the focus, and the ability to make his body obey his will so completely. It had been almost like piloting.

He'd be long dead, if not for Ryo.

Shiro turned away, feeling his expression close down and not able to stop it. “I don't think it'd be a good idea.”

“What, you think people are going to give you shit? Ignore 'em. You're too damn touchy about what people think.”

That had probably been true, Shiro admitted to himself, with some amusement. It wasn't the problem here. He was so focused on remembering that these were aliens, it was almost easy to stop caring about what they thought of him. But he couldn't do that entirely, or he'd slip up and do something that would reveal he was just playing along, that he wasn't buying the simulation entirely. And combat always had brought out some of his worst flashbacks.

“Is this because you think you hurt people before?”

Shiro seized on the excuse. “I know I hurt people. I lost it. I'm lucky that – Matt wasn't seriously injured.”

“What have they told you?”

“That everybody was fine.” Shiro shrugged. It made his back itch to keep Not-Ryo where he couldn't see him, but on the other hand, he didn't want the alien to be able to see his face, either.

“Docs are idiots. They should have given you details. I saw the airlock video, Shiro, and it was impressive. Even more so because you _didn't_ go all-out on them. You didn't try anything that would have seriously hurt anybody. You dislocated a bunch of shoulders and Regetti needed surgery for his knee. He was back up and running long before you were. Frankly, I've seen you try more vicious moves in practice.”

Maybe he'd let the faces these aliens were wearing get to him more than he'd realized.

Not-Ryo stepped up beside him, and Shiro realized what an enormous mistake it had been to turn his back on him just as Not-Ryo clapped him on the shoulder.

It was a friendly move. Nothing that he should have overreacted to, usually. But this was an alien wearing the face of a friend and teacher, and Shiro's mind shorted out, limbs moving without his brain involved. He snapped back to awareness as Ryo blocked a blow and tripped him up, and then they both hit the mat, rolling. Shiro scrambled frantically for a hold, knowing that being pinned was death, and all of his opponents were bigger or stronger or faster, and his arm was gone and all he had was leverage.

They wound up with Not-Ryo pressed face into the floor, with Shiro's left hand bending back fingers and his leg interposed to keep Not-Ryo's other arm in a painful lock. The fake hand was around Not-Ryo's throat.

“And?” asked Not-Ryo, a bit breathless. “Is this supposed to convince me you can't hold back?”

Shiro let go and scrambled off of him. Not-Ryo rolled to his feet and dusted himself off.

“I'm sorry, I – ”

“Don't apologize, kid.” Not-Ryo's gaze was too sharp and direct. “You don't like being touched unexpectedly. That's new.”

This wasn't – this wasn't good. He couldn't pretend about this. He couldn't give the simulation this. “I'm fine.” He was breathing too fast.

“I didn't say you weren't,” Not-Ryo said, holding up his hands in a gesture that might have been meant to be calming. Shiro couldn't keep himself from tensing at the movement. “I'm sorry for not giving you warning.”

“It's fine.”

“Pretty quick reaction you've got there. Are you... are the docs are treating you okay?”

“I'm fine.”

“Okay. But, you know, if anyone had – the Garrison's a decent place, but that doesn't mean – look. I know bad things can happen, even where they shouldn't. Medical abuse isn't entirely gone from the scientific community. If something happened – ”

“Nothing happened,” Shiro snapped. He took a step back, and then another, not realizing what he'd been aiming for until he had the door in his line of vision as well as Not-Ryo.

“I'm sorry. I don't mean to push,” said Not-Ryo. He tried for a small smile, though it looked forced. “Not about that. I do think you should start coming to classes again, that was sloppy footwork. But – I'm here, Shiro. If anything did happen. If you need backup.”

 _Stop doing this to me!_ Shiro wanted to scream at him. Why was this so much harder than talking to Not-Nguyen? Was it because he hadn't really known Nguyen before, didn't have a reason to cherish and respect her memory? Because she never tried to touch him? God, this was worse than Not-Keith. Not-Keith was so terribly, awfully like Keith had been, but at least that meant he didn't often reach out, let matters drop when Shiro said to, let Shiro have at least the illusion of privacy in his own thoughts.

“I'm fine,” Shiro said, and managed to force himself to turn his back on Not-Ryo long enough to make a break for the door.

  


Dawn found him on the roof, sitting cross-legged with his elbows on his knees. He'd calmed down enough that the encounter was no longer rattling his brain to bits, and now he was left trying to decide what to do about it. Did the simulation want to see him fight? His instinctual response to that was _No!_ But one of Ryo's classes hardly made for arena-style entertainment, which they obviously knew if they'd introduced Not-Ryo to the simulation. If the aliens wanted to learn more about his fighting style, all they had to do was watch some of the old arena broadcasts. And anyway, his personal style at hand-to-hand didn't actually matter that much when it came to doing anything with Voltron.

Which he wasn't a part of, anymore, anyway. Maybe, if he could reestablish his bond with the Black Lion enough to get _out_ of here, but... maybe not.

Whatever their reasons, it all struck too close to home. He felt better when he could be regularly active, moving and practising: it helped him keep his mind calm and made him feel more awake during the day. And, maybe it was silly, avoiding joining the classes when the simulation could watch him practise on his own just as well, but he didn't want to give it the chance to see him spar with anybody else.

Except that after Ryo's comment about sloppy footwork – yeah, he shouldn't have been able to catch Shiro with that trip – now his own lack of practise was starting to bug him, too. What if he got out of here and had to catch up on everything – again?

What if he got out of here and his body had wasted away, trapped in a coma for months on end?

 _Then I'll retrain_ , he told himself grimly. _I'll make it back._

_Patience yields focus._

  


In the end, boredom and restlessness drove him to join Not-Ryo's classes. He'd never had this much free time in his life: even as a prisoner of the Galra, he'd spent most of him time training in his cell. Before, on Earth, his days had always been jam-packed, and now the only thing he really had to do was make sure he reported to Medical once a day and to Not-Nguyen's office every other. The isolation was – wearing. Joining the class didn't really help, not when he had to constantly remind himself that it _was_ all fake, that he couldn't make friends with anyone else there, because they weren't really there. But at least he got to practice, although the only person who could really pose a challenge to him anymore was Not-Ryo.

“I'd swear you actually got better while you were in a coma,” Not-Ryo panted, during one spar. “Look at you. You haven't even gained back all the muscle mass you lost, yet.”

But it wasn't so far off. And Shiro was down to sleeping only ten or eleven hours a day, even including his morning and afternoon naps. He'd started improving a lot faster once he'd stopped throwing all of his energy into reaching the Black Lion, although he could still feel the quintessence-fatigue pulling him down, a constant, sleepy weight.

He'd fought through much worse in the arena. He broke a grab, blocked a couple other jabs, and tagged Not-Ryo with a knife-hand to the neck, one which would have had him choking or worse if Shiro hadn't pulled the blow.

“Patience yields focus,” he told Not-Ryo, making it slightly taunting.

“Yeah, yeah,” said Not-Ryo, and twisted into a leg-sweep that Shiro just barely jumped over.

  


“You look happier,” said Not-Keith, the next time they had lunch together.

They were sitting on the roof, in the shade of one of the massive satellites. Soon it would be too hot to have lunch up here even in the shade. The long summer was approaching, and nobody would want to do anything outside. Even now Shiro had shifted to napping longer in the afternoon and taking the bike out after dusk. Sometimes it struck him that it wasn't the safest thing to do, out in the desert at night with nobody but himself and the stars – but then he'd remember it didn't matter.

“I am, I guess,” Shiro said. The constant, low-key stress of captivity wore at him, but the physical exercise, or the sensation thereof, helped. Having something more to structure his days, beyond his own will and visits to Medical, also helped.

He'd say it was the cushiest prison he'd ever been in, but he hadn't forgotten what had happened before he'd started playing along.

He needed to change the subject. “You haven't told me how your team trials went.” Cadet pilots didn't get put in the more complicated simulations, which required a crew, until third year. Keith could probably have handled a good half of the simulations all by himself, even when he'd been in first year, but his abysmal teamwork skills had kept him from being moved ahead. Shiro had pulled favours to allow him to try out some of the more advanced simulations, and he'd blown away the records – Shiro's own – but Shiro hadn't suggested moving him ahead, either, the way he himself had gotten bumped up, back when he'd been determined to graduate and reach the stars as soon as possible. He'd thought Keith had needed more grounding.

Considering how everything had turned out, maybe Keith had just needed a real challenge.

Beside him, Not-Keith made a dark face. “Terrible. Harris kept repeating that the pilots are supposed to be in charge, but none of them would listen to me. I don't even know why they make us do team rotations. It's not like we get to pick our permanent teams.”

“No, but the instructors do. They're looking to see who you click with, or who challenges you the best.”

“Any of them would be a challenge. I can run the sims better by myself.”

“Up until you can't. Give your classmates a chance. There's comms and engineers who are equally as brilliant at what they do as you are at piloting, and just as nervous about working in teams. Patience isn't just something for yourself.”

Not-Keith grimaced. “Are you going to be teaching sims next year?”

Shiro shook his head. “Probably not. Iverson usually takes the intro fighter class himself.”

“You're wasted on teaching cargo-haulers.”

“Nobody's a waste to teach. Definitely not anybody who's made it this far.”

“They're never going to be good enough.”

The cargo-class? Or any of them, period? This was someone else wearing Keith's face, trying to poke at Shiro's brain, and he wound up saying the exact opposite of what he'd have said to Keith. “If you don't give them the chance, then they never will be. And sooner or later you'll be stranded, on your own.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“Figure it out, hotshot,” Shiro said, and left Not-Keith sitting there on the roof alone.

  


Not-Nguyen didn't particularly like hearing that he took his bike out late, but Shiro couldn't be bothered to pretend at hiding it from her. He reassured her that he always had his phone on him and emergency beacons, described at length the calm of the desert at night, and that kept him from getting him confined to base even if she didn't fully approve. But he'd been judged 'sane' for months, now, was back at his old weight, and even trips to Medical and Not-Nguyen had become to taper off. They'd been over everything leading up to and during his 'episode' so many times that it was hard to imagine there was anything more to talk about. And the rest... Not-Nguyen didn't know about the rest. Taking up Ryo's classes again had helped there, convincing her that he was getting back into the swing of things, interacting with other people. In truth, he was spending more time out and about, but that had more to do with things quieting down for the summer break. Most of the cadets went and a large portion of the teaching staff likewise took time off, leaving the hallways empty.

Fewer trips to Medical meant Shiro had less to do than ever, and taking the bike out into the desert on a summer day was just asking for heatstroke. But he would have preferred the nights anyway. For a simulation, it had captured the night sky perfectly. Far out from the lights of the Garrison, on the highest windy plateaus, Shiro could stretch himself out and pillow his head on his arms, and just... drift. He could pretend that the right arm was his own, that the stars he saw were as limitless as reality.

Sometimes, he'd sign out an extra bike for Not-Keith – staying over the summer at the Garrison, as Keith had every year he'd been there – and they'd go out racing, which Shiro definitely left out of his discussions with Not-Nguyen. If she thought solo night biking was dangerous, she'd have a fit over the daredevil stunts they pulled as they careened from one arbitrary point to another. Not-Keith won a little more often than not, emulating Keith's sheer talent, but Shiro knew the desert a lot better and had more tricks up his sleeve. They started racing out further and further, through wind-carved gorges and worn rock spires, diving off cliffs with abandon. Not-Keith was easier to be around, like this, and not because he wasn't talking to Shiro: Keith had been the same way, relaxing into his skin only when he was pushing his piloting skills to the max. It was an easy mindset for Shiro to understand, now.

  


_"The Galaxy Garrison mission to the distant moon of Kerberos is missing. Contact was lost with the shuttle late last night, soon after it began its entry into the Kuiper Belt, a field filled with asteroids and small planetoids, including Pluto and Kerberos...”_

The announcement of the Kerberos mission failure blindsided him.

The Garrison's rumour mill, reduced for the summer, could produce little more information than the public newsfeeds. Still weeks away from its destination, the shuttle was already light-hours away from Earth. Nobody would know what had happened until they could reposition GLIM, the deep space satellite orbiting Neptune, to get a closer look.

On the shuttle, they'd counted not by date but Mission Days: Shiro had to look up the new launch date before he could be sure. Then he had to swallow down bile. Allowing for the delayed launch, the timing was the same. He hadn't even realized that date was approaching. What the hell did the simulation gain from figuring it out and including it?

Not-Iverson summoned him two days later, and Shiro arrived at his door to find him looking old and tired, the bearer of grim tidings.

“Sit down, Lieutenant,” he ordered, waving away Shiro's salute. “There's been some news and I wanted to make sure you heard it before the general gossip.”

“About the Kerberos shuttle, sir?”

“GLIM's found wreckage. A piece of the wing. It's not the whole shuttle, but it doesn't look good.”

“No transmissions?”

“None pointed in directions we could pick them up from. GLIM will keep scanning, but there were a couple rogue asteroids in the same area. We're not ruling out a mechanical problem, but... pilot error is looking more and more likely.”

 _Pilot error_. Of course. Maybe _this_ was why the simulation had included this scenario: to poke at him. Like hell was pilot error likely this soon into an investigation, without any received transmissions to show what had gone wrong. Not unless the Garrison was sitting on a whole lot more evidence.

He considered the strain on Not-Iverson's face, and settled for saying, “Betsy Choi's a better pilot than that, sir.”

Not-Iverson glared at him. “I know how good a pilot she is – was. Nobody's immune to error, not with all the testing and training in the world. You should know that better than anybody, Shirogane.”

That was probably supposed to be a dig, but considering the circumstances, Shiro couldn't feel anything more than darkly amused. “Sir.”

“Hrmph. Get out of here, Lieutenant. And keep your head down, stay on base. This is going to be a nightmare to deal with and I want you to stay the hell out of it.”

Easier said than done. Everybody on base knew he'd been the original Kerberos pilot and too many of them wanted his opinion, especially following the closure of the disrespectfully short investigative period with the public announcement that Choi's piloting had been at fault. Choi had been a couple years older than him, and he hadn't really known her well beyond training, but she'd always been beyond competent and she'd flown plenty of missions on her own. Was flying, still, probably, out there somewhere in reality.

It was getting harder and harder to constantly keep that forefront in his thoughts.

But he was reminded a couple weeks later when, just before the start of the new semester, he heard a commotion going on a few halls down. Raised voices turned to shouts, and Shiro found himself sprinting before he even thought about it, skidding around a corner and to a halt just in time to witness a thunderously angry Katie Holt being bodily pulled away from Iverson's office.

“You can't keep me out! I'll find the truth! I'll never stop!”

The sight of her was like a slap across the face. Shiro had to put a hand on the wall to steady himself.

“Get her out of here!” Iverson barked, and Pidge – Katie – _Not-_ Katie was dragged down the hall toward Shiro, toward the exit. Not-Iverson caught sight of Shiro standing there and added, “And you! I said keep yourself _out_ of this, Lieutenant!”

“Apologies. Sir.”

Not-Pidge stared at him as she was dragged past, as sharp in her anger as she'd ever been in a moment of calm. “You! You were the original pilot. Do you know what they're hiding? There wasn't any wreckage!” The MP was nearly at the doors with her. “You can't hide this forever!”

The double doors whooshed shut behind her and the MP, and Shiro breathed out.

“That girl is crazy,” Not-Iverson said. “Grief or not, she's lost it.” He marched back into his office and slammed the door shut.

Shiro stared at his closed door, and then at the ones that Not-Pidge had been dragged through. He hadn't... he hadn't expected to see her, like that. Stupid. Whether it was Choi or Shiro piloting, it was her family lost. He needed to stop underestimating the simulation. And with the new term starting soon, he knew exactly what her next step would be, so the simulation knew it, too. And there'd be a Lance and a Hunk, and probably a Keith, since he hadn't managed to get expelled.

He stared again at Not-Iverson's door, appalled. Suddenly he knew _exactly_ what classes he'd be covering this semester.

_I'll find the truth! I'll never stop!_

In light of her burning determination, his desperate patience seemed a pitiful thing.

  


That night Shiro took the bike out deep into the desert, beyond any of the bluffs he'd visited before. He stuffed his phone in his pocket and navigated by the stars, so bright in the dry air that they could have been painted there by a master's brush. He drew to a stop at the edge of a canyon he didn't recognize, some gulch worn into the rock through thousands of years, each mighty thunderstorm carving it deeper and then leaving it to dry.

He settled the bike and turned off the lights, then stepped to the canyon's rim, his path illuminated only by starlight. He could have done it blindfolded. His sense of the world around him had never been clearer, and it had never been more difficult to remember that it was all an illusion.

He knelt in _seiza_ and turned all his attention inward, reaching for that state where he'd spoken to the Black Lion before – before he'd died. Before the Black Lion had held him within her and _before, after, up, down_ had ceased to have any meaning.

Reaching it, he felt – not exhausted. Almost refreshed.

But the Black Lion was not there, and he could not find her.


	4. Chapter 4

The Garrison always became something of a kicked-over ant-hill before the start of the fall semester, but it was obvious to anyone with eyes that the ramp-up this year was a lot more than that. There were a lot of new faces in the officers' mess, some pulled from sabbaticals, some from other bases, and most damningly, some out of retirement. The rumour mill was all abuzz that it had something to do with the fate of the Kerberos mission. Some people thought it was some kind of jinx: two pilots, and both had failed catastrophically. At least Shirogane hadn't taken anyone else down with him. But what if Shirogane would have been able to avoid whatever Choi had done to cause the crash...?

Shiro did his best to ignore it all and simply told anyone who asked that Choi was an excellent pilot. He was more curious about the new arrivals and the new projects, none of which he had clearance to be read in on. It wasn't anything he'd ever seen in reality. Which meant it was some kind of test or trap, sure, but it was at least more interesting than his summer had been, and it didn't involve anyone named Pidge, Lance, Hunk, or Keith.

Not-Keith, at least, hadn't called Choi a poor pilot. He'd seemed shaken by the whole thing instead – and Shiro would have talked to him about it, if it'd been Keith. He had, when other pilots had fumbled badly in the past, though these were the first fatalities since the signing of Luna Treaty II. When not in a snit, Keith had no problem recognizing the talents of others, and he'd seen too much of the world to think himself invulnerable.

But Keith wasn't actually here and Shiro was preoccupied. He didn't feel back to full strength, and he wouldn't get anywhere by further damaging his quintessence with flailing attempts to contact the Black Lion. He had to figure out how to harness that mental energy properly, and while he knew how to meditate and he knew how to reach Black when there was something reaching back for him, he was hardly an Altean. When he'd worked on bonding with Black the first time, they'd been physically in the same place. Now he had no idea where Black was and his own reality was warped, distorted. He didn't really know what he was doing, with neither a physical connection nor a mental one already in place.

It was easier, in the desert with stars spread out above him. He was up nearly the entire night, most nights, something that he'd have to change when classes started and he couldn't nap during the day, or else the simulation would no doubt put Not-Nguyen or Not-Iverson on his case. But it didn't leave him feeling exhausted. It left him feeling like he'd almost touched the stars, but the centre of his universe remained just beyond reach.

 _Progress,_ he told himself. Patience could still pay off, after all.

It burned against the back of his throat like bile.

  


Classes started and everything got harder.

There were so many new people in the halls, and they all knew who he was. Whispers followed him everywhere he went, and no matter that he reminded himself that it wasn't real, it was the simulation, sometimes it was hard to ignore when the eyes that watched him looked so human. The secret projects kept ramping up. Several instructors were removed from the teaching rotation at the last minute, and new ones had to be found, leaving everyone stressed and snappish. Shiro, initially assigned only a part-time load, got handed extra seminars to supervise the day before classes began.

And then two intermediate CQC classes, when Ryo was re-assigned – off-base, off-planet, Shiro couldn't find out. But now he had fifty cadets to yell through drills every morning.

The incoming class was larger than it had ever been. The Garrison had opened its gates, allowing in a number of last-minute applicants. Shiro found himself getting caught up in the speculation over why they were trying to build numbers so fast, and then got annoyed at falling for the simulation's goads.

He dragged himself through that first morning. He hadn't gone out to the desert and ceiling of his room had stared down at him all night, close and confining, although that probably had something to do with how screwed up his sleep cycle was. Most of the cadets were equally sleep-deprived after the all-night welcome-back parties that the instructors had turned a blind eye to, but he was supposed to be paying that back by cheerfully and maniacally running them into the ground. He sent them through warmups and basic drills instead. That was easier. If he came across as a softy – eh, whatever.

But that evening Not-Iverson summoned him to his office.

“You're taking on the fighter-class sims.” Not-Iverson sounded both tired and grumpy, and he eyed Shiro with a faintly suspicious air, as he had done since the run-in with Not-Katie.

Shiro was too tired to pretend at surprise. “Yes, sir.”

  


What he hadn't been expecting was for Lance, Not-Lance, to be in the cargo-pilot class. After seeing him in the Red Lion for so long, he'd forgotten. The first time Shiro did roll-call and came to his name, he nearly tripped over his own tongue. He glanced up and saw that Not-Lance was watching him with a mix of nervousness and defiance.

Not really him, Shiro reminded himself, and moved on.

Group simulations were always a gong-show at first. The first week was designed that way, to try and hammer in the message that _you can't do everything on your own_ , and that, out in the black, you needed to rely on your team. Shiro had long suspected that it was a teaching method that didn't actually work for a lot of the cadets, leading to frustration and non-cooperation in the face of problems that they couldn't solve anyway, before they'd gotten the chance to get to know each other. Better to build trust, first.

It was all part of a much bigger simulation, but he tried testing out his theory anyway. He slowed down the scenarios, talked the cadets through them, and by the end of the afternoon some of them were bored and a lot of them were triumphant.

Not-Lance was clearly the best pilot of the bunch, the barest sliver below being fighter-class himself. He'd have easily made the cut if he could only get out of his own way. Or maybe Shiro was just leaning on him harder than he had on some of the other groups. He wanted to think he could be impartial, even within the simulation, but – oh, heck. It didn't matter. It shouldn't matter.

“You're totally missing the point, Shirogane,” one of the officers who'd come in briefly to observe told him later, over dinner. “Don't let Iverson catch you at this.”

“If it gets results,” said Shiro, and shrugged.

  


Fighter-class came with a generally different kind of pilot. There was Not-Keith, and then there were the others: just as driven, just as determined, but, on the whole, a lot cockier and with a whole lot less reason. Keith had always stood apart, his sheer natural talent as a pilot and deep reserve keeping him from becoming one of the group. If he could just slow down long enough to play with the others, he could pull them up with him, become – well, Shiro had seen the kind of leader he'd become.

Here and now, there was Not-Hunk and Not-Keith on the same team, along with a third cadet, Not-Michelle. Shiro had checked, and Not-Pidge had enrolled, but she hadn't gotten skipped ahead far enough in classes yet to be joining group sims. Shiro found himself wondering what had happened to the real Michelle, after Keith had dropped out and Hunk had gotten re-assigned to Lance and Pidge's group – and then he had to remind himself that he didn't even know if a Cadet Michelle Williams existed. Probably not, since Shiro had never met her before. The simulation had to have made her up from whole cloth.

He soft-balled the sims for this class, too, keeping it at the regular speed but talking them through it, which mostly meant repeating over and over into the intercom, “Tell your crewmates what you're doing.” Even the kids who liked to talk kept forgetting to say the important things, or didn't say them clearly. Eagerness, arrogance, and a desire to be cool had them throwing in too-advanced lingo that they didn't really know how to use, and somebody would get confused, and then there'd be shouting and a crash.

At least nobody threw up, though that may have been because Shiro had a quiet word with Not-Keith about keeping his flying smooth unless he wanted to be cleaning vomit out of the engine block.

He was running through the group de-brief for the second-last team when a scuffle broke out at the back of the class. Shiro, the tallest person in the room by far, caught sight of the first punch thrown out of the corner of his eye, and almost groaned: Keith. Or, Not-Keith. But it was _so_ very like Keith. He was between the combatants before more than another punch or two could be thrown, a grip on each of their collars as he pulled them apart.

“Cadets,” Shiro said mildly. “This is a sim class, not CQC.” He looked between the pair of them. Not-Keith looked upset, offended and angry; the other cadet, Not-Sagara, looked angry but also a bit nervous, a little bit smug. _What the hell, Keith,_ Shiro found himself thinking. “Since you're so eager, you can report to the early morning combat class for the next week, in addition to your current classes. 0500, in the red gym.”

He let them go, then turned around and called up the team who'd been getting debriefed, switching the direction of the classroom back-to-front. Not-Keith and Not-Sagara stayed in front of him, alternating glares at the floor and glares at each other.

He tried to catch Not-Keith's gaze when the debriefing was complete, but Not-Keith wouldn't look at him for the rest of the session.

When he dismissed the class, he held back the comms and engineers of both Not-Keith and Not-Sagara's teams. They stood around nervously as the rest of the cadets filed out, and then Shiro crossed his arms. He kept his expression neutral as he said, “I'm not happy with you four, either. If your teammate is being an idiot, it's your responsibility to notice that and put a stop to it. You're crew, now. That means working together before and after the missions, not just during. Your success depends just as much on your prep and post-work as it does on anything else.”

“But, sir,” Not-Sagara's comms tech tried to begin.

He cut her off. “If you've got a problem with your teammate, you work it out with them. If you can't work it out and it's causing problems for the mission, you go to your commander for guidance – that's Commander Iverson, for you. But you need to make an effort to talk to each other. If you see your crewmate doing something that's a problem, you need to communicate it to them. It could save your life one day. Get this through your head: you're responsible for more than just yourself, now. Understood?”

“Yes, sir,” they said, in various degrees of mumble, and he dismissed them for dinner.

  


The 0500 class was actually the new time-slot for Ryo-Sensei's advanced class – not so much a class anymore, with Ryo gone, but most of them had wanted to keep it going and so they'd started to work out a rotation for leading the class. All of them had taught CQC at lower levels, were probably good enough to compete nationally, but more and more often Shiro found himself leading the practice anyway, much to his chagrin. While Shiro had always been one of the best students, it now felt like the others all moved in slow motion.

Likely, it was due to the fact that this was a simulation: Shiro remembered these fights as being so much easier than the ones in the arena, and so they were. At least they let him train his mental reflexes, even if his real body was suffering neglect.

It was probably stupid to be teaching a bunch of aliens to fight him, but really, it was just CQC, not giving them the specs for the lions. They'd already gotten the drop on him, anyway.

Keith would have taken getting to actually participate in the advanced class as a reward rather than a punishment, and maybe Sagara would have been the same way. When Not-Keith and Not-Sagara showed up, yawning, Shiro set them to running laps instead. A couple of the other instructors teased, not unkindly, and then they all got down to work.

But he hadn't counted on Not-Keith being a distraction. In the middle of a spar, two-on-one for practice against multiple attackers, Shiro caught sight of Not-Keith as he ran. He was watching Shiro's fight – no, Shiro himself. Shiro paused, thrown for a moment – and then Keith's eyes widened in alarm, and Shiro felt the incoming attack, forgot for a moment that he had a teammate in this fight, that this was just sparring. What he knew was that there were people around him that were _wrong_ , hostile aliens, and he grabbed the incoming arm, digging his fingers in – so much weaker than his prosthetic – and twisting, pulling them in towards him until he could throw them over his hip, into the closest alien behind him, eliciting cries of alarm and complaint. He ignored them, turning on another that had begun to approach him, only to suddenly back up, arms up in a gesture of defeat.

“Shiro?”

“Shiro!”

That was Keith's voice. But the aliens weren't attacking anymore.

The aliens were –

Shiro snapped back, and saw that everybody else was staring at him, including the two cadets. Their eyes pressed down on him, alien and demanding.

“Uh,” said Shiro weakly. “Sorry.”

“Okay, okay, as you were,” a voice ordered, a welcome relief. It was Not-Tsume, Shiro's teammate for this exercise. “Johansen, you okay?”

The big Norwegian rolled to a sitting position and put his elbows on his knees. “Yeah, I'm fine.”

“I'm not,” groaned Not-Suparman, still supine on the floor after Johansen had landed on him. But when Not-Tsume stepped closer in concern, he grinned and waved them off. “Nah, I'm just bruised. You make a hell of a paperweight, Johansen.”

“I admit, if I'd known you could manage to throw me like that, I wouldn't have tried that approach,” said Not-Johansen, looking speculatively at Shiro. Shiro looked away.

“Whatever,” Not-Tsume dismissed them both. “Get ice if you need it or get your asses back up and back at practice. Cadets! I said as you were, that means back to laps! Shiro, come on.”

She was an alien, but she was an alien showing him kindness, and it let him duck Not-Keith's worried gaze. She led him over to the benches and sat down, pulling out her own water-bottle and tossing Shiro's at him. He caught it reflexively, left-handed.

“You wanna talk about it?” she asked, her voice pitched low enough that it couldn't be heard over the sounds of the others' sparring, taunts and grunts of pain.

Shiro groaned, softly. Was he going to have to tell Not-Nguyen about this? With the start of classes, she'd declared that they could cut their sessions to once a week: she was extra-busy, too. There was no way he wanted to give her a reason to refocus on trying to pick apart his brain. Or give the simulation a reason to have her refocus. But the simulation already knew...

He rubbed at his forehead. The longer this went on, the harder it was to keep track.

“Shiro?”

“You know I lost it during quarantine last year,” he said, finally. “This was just – a little like that. It happens. I'm good.”

“Uh-huh.” Not-Tsume sounded sceptical. When he looked over at her, her face was carefully composed. “You sure you've never run combat missions?”

Tsume herself was thirty-five and a veteran of the Moon Colonies Crisis. He supposed it made sense that Not-Tsume would recognize the signs.

“I'd think it would be in my file if I had,” Shiro said lightly, and a moment later realized he'd given her the exact wrong impression when her expression went sad.

“If you ever need to talk – ”

Shiro shook his head.

“Just keep it in mind. There's a couple support groups around the Garrison, you know.”

“Sure,” Shiro said, non-committal, and drained his water bottle. When he finished he breathed deep, looking out over the rest of the group, and the cadets beyond them, running back and forth. He felt his mouth twist into a frown. “Great. This is gonna do wonders for my control over the class.”

“You'll be fine. They saw you throw Johansen a good ten feet.”

Johansen, at six-foot-ten with a build not unlike Hunk's, could have given some Galra a run for their size. Small Galra. He'd tossed around larger aliens before, though he'd always had the arm, then. He was lucky that the guy knew how to fall properly, or Suparman really could have gotten hurt. Not that any of this was real. It was just easier to get through the day if he didn't have to worry about problems in the classes, which he wanted to go smoothly because – well, because it was something to do, that was all.

Not for the first time, Shiro pondered quitting the Garrison, just taking the bike out to Keith's old shack and holing up. But even if the simulation let him, it wouldn't make time run any faster. Luxuries like electricity and hot running water weren't to be scoffed at, either, even if it was all in his head.

“You good?” asked Not-Tsume. “Or do you want to sit out the next round?”

“I'm good,” said Shiro, and he capped the water-bottle and stood.

  


By the end of the week he was tired and snappish, enough that it was hard not to take it out on the cadets in classes when they were being idiots or not paying attention. Not-Nguyen caught on to it at their next meeting, and spent the entire time going over classes with him, and talking about vulnerabilities. By the end of it Shiro felt like he cared a lot more about faked alien gossip than he had at the beginning, and it made him that much more irritable.

That evening he gave up on getting a full night's sleep and left his quarters after curfew was called for the cadets, finding his way up to the roof. As soon as the stars overhead came into view, something in him relaxed. Something else tightened, like the faintest tug on a tether from a long way off.

But he wasn't alone.

Not-Pidge was sitting there, looking exactly as she had the first time he'd been (re)-introduced to her, all wild hair and baggy clothes, a far cry from the dresses she used to enjoy whenever he'd met her in Matt or Commander Holt's company. She had her laptop and notebook in front of her along with a bunch of equipment he couldn't really identify, which looked cobbled together out of a scrapheap.

“I know the view from the roof's pretty awesome,” said Shiro behind her, and she jumped a foot off the ground and shrieked, clutching her laptop to her chest. “Woah, calm down, cadet.”

“Uh,” said Not-Pidge. “This isn't what it looks like! Sir.” She was blinking rapidly – she probably couldn't see him in the dark, Shiro realized. Not after staring at the bright screen of her laptop. Good. He didn't feel up to an interrogation.

“It looks like a cadet sitting on the roof, out of bounds, after curfew. At least you weren't trying to sneak into town to get drunk. Get back to your dorm. If I catch you up here again, I won't overlook it.”

Her eyes narrowed. Shiro wondered if she could make out his white hair in the dark. He stared her down, and jerked a thumb over his shoulder to emphasize the order.

“Yes, sir,” she said, only a little sullenly, and started shoving things into her backpack. He wandered over to the edge of the roof, impatient for her to be gone. Maybe he should have taken the bike out to the desert, anyway. It was only when he heard the fire escape door swing shut behind her that he could fully relax.

He boosted himself up to the stairwell roof and stretched out on the gravel there, the highest point he could reach unless he wanted to try balancing on a satellite dish. The stars overhead beckoned, and Shiro felt his breathing slow into meditation as he fell _up_ , into the black sky and the suns therein.

Galaxies swirled around him, through him, part of him. He let his mind go, not trying for meditation or reaching toward the Black Lion, but just letting it _expand_. He spooled out past stars and nebula, skated along the accretion disk of a black hole, darted past the bright flares of solar plumes, and felt himself drawn down, to a hundred thousand worlds, more than his living mind could comprehend. He skimmed over their surfaces and felt the connection anyway: a lack of understanding did not preclude empathy.

He woke to the shrill sound of his phone's alarm, drawing back into himself, feeling at once tiny and infinite: the smallest part of a larger whole.

“What was that,” Shiro breathed into the predawn air.

That had been _real._


	5. Chapter 5

The second week Not-Keith got into another fight, one which Shiro wasn't there to break up. He heard about it when Not-Montgomery called him down to her office. It'd been in the dorms, not in class, and by the time an officer had arrived had involved at least five cadets.

“You promised me this wouldn't happen again,” Not-Montgomery said flatly. “I heard about what happened in last week's sims class, Lieutenant. There's only so long he can skate by under your protection.”

Shiro finished reading the responding officer's report and set it back on Not-Montgomery's desk. “Four on one? Sounds like he can take care of his own protection, ma'am.”

She drummed her fingers on her desk. “The other cadets are saying he threw the first punch.”

“They would have to say that,” Shiro pointed out, because at four-to-one odds they came off very, very badly if Keith hadn't. Not that Shiro believed Keith was incapable of picking a fight with four other people at the same time, but in his own opinion the other cadets still came off badly, ganging up instead of trying to break up the fight.

“A couple of witnesses collaborated the story. Apparently Kogane snapped after Meyers said something insulting about you.” Not-Montgomery's gaze lasered in on Shiro like she was trying to burn through his skull.

Ah. Was that was this was about? Shiro had figured it was just the simulation making Keith realistic.

He didn't let his expression shift. “He's going to have to learn to deal with that.”

“And with any other comments. 'Fighting words' isn't a law on the books any longer, and it's certainly not an acceptable excuse at the Garrison.” She sighed. “You know as well as I do exactly how good that kid is. And his initial group sims have been more promising than I would have expected. But he's never going to be given a ship if we can't trust him not to ram it into the first target that pisses him off! He's on probation, Lieutenant. One more incident and he's out. If you want him to stick around, get that through his head.”

“Yes, ma'am. I understand.”

  


He collected Not-Keith from the infirmary. He was sporting a black eye, and probably more bruises under his uniform from the stiff way he moved, but the nurse on duty flicked her fingers in a gesture of bored dismissal when Shiro asked if there was any reason for him to stay. The other cadets were nursing various injuries of their own: Not-Keith had given as good as he got. Not-Sagara wasn't among them.

Shiro took them to the garage and stopped outside. “Hey. Look at me.”

“I'm sorry,” Not-Keith said immediately. He met Shiro's gaze directly, and Shiro found that he had to prevent himself from flinching back. Keith had never had an issue meeting anyone's eyes, which probably contributed to him winding up in so many fights: he often came across as confrontational when he was just being direct.

Looking him straight in the eye, it was so much harder to remember that this wasn't Keith. Shiro had been avoiding looking at him straight-on for months for that very reason.

But he sort of had to, in order to evaluate the damage to Not-Keith's face. “That eye's not gonna swell up the entire way. There anything else that would keep you from driving?”

“No,” Not-Keith said warily.

“Come on, then.”

He signed out his own bike, and another for Not-Keith, and they roared out of the garage and into the dusk. The fight had happened before dinner: by now, the sun was down, but the sky was a wash of orange and crimson, fading into deep indigo in the east, where the first stars were just barely visible. Shiro drove aimlessly, taking them down a few familiar trails, nothing challenging, until he found a vantage point where the Garrison wasn't visible and the tapestry of oncoming night was.

Then he pulled to a stop and slid off the bike, going over to the edge of the cliff and sitting, letting his feet dangle over the hundred-meter drop. After a couple seconds, Not-Keith came over and sat down beside him.

Shiro waited. Keith could ride out a silence like nobody else that Shiro knew, but when it was particularly personal – when it was Shiro – he was never quite so stubborn. Out here there was only the wind and the slow reveal of the stars.

Sure enough, after a minute: “They say things about you,” Not-Keith said, breaking the quiet.

That was easy. “So? Let them.”

He could practically hear Not-Keith stewing beside him at that answer. But it seemed to make him clam up, which wasn't what Shiro had been going for.

After a minute, Shiro said, “I don't care what they say. You can see that I don't care. Why do you care, then?”

A more hesitant silence, this time, and then Not-Keith said, “You told me it was important to not give up on myself.”

Shiro leaned back on his hands, letting his gaze tip upward toward the stars. They spread before him, seemingly vast and enduring. He'd seen how malleable they were, how each sun was but a piece in the whole. They reached out to him now. The picture was a simulation, but behind it was the vastness of reality. It was hard not to let go, to answer them.

But if he did that, he wasn't quite sure he'd manage to come back. Wasn't sure if he'd find the Black Lion, or lose himself entirely. He'd been part of the cosmos before, and it wasn't the escape he was looking for now.

Not-Keith's voice jolted him back to Earth. “Shiro?”

Shiro hummed, low in his throat, concentrating on the feeling of gritty sandstone beneath his fingers – both hands – letting it ground him to the illusion, here and now. “Do you think I've given up on myself?”

“...I didn't think you ever wanted to be an instructor.”

“You think I'm settling.” He waved one hand at himself, letting it indicate, in general: his head, his brain, his hair. “Because they won't let me back on missions.”

“Are you?” His voice was very small.

Shiro tipped his head, fighting down a grimace. Was that what the simulation thought? As well as it knew him, it had to know that would never happen. So apparently it was using Not-Keith to dig into it. He'd been better off when all he had to contend with were more frequent sessions with Not-Nguyen.

Stalling, he asked, “Do you think being a pilot was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life? It's got a mandatory retirement age of thirty-five for fighter-class. Forty-five, if you switch to shuttle runs.”

“No, but...” He heard more than saw Not-Keith's scowl. “You're a long way from that.”

He was. If this had happened to him in real life, he'd have been devastated. But Shiro liked to think that he'd have adapted, given time.

“I've seen space. I've seen a _lot_ of space.” No, that was too close to the truth. “I had the highest number of flight hours logged for anyone under twenty-five before I even heard about the Kerberos mission. A record you're not gonna beat if you get yourself kicked out of the Garrison for fighting, by the way.”

That little sally fell flat. Shiro sighed and let it die. “Of course I wanted to keep going. But sometimes you have to rethink things. To know when it's more important to step aside, let somebody else do a particular job, and figure out what's most important for _you_ to be doing.”

“Teaching?”

Shiro laughed at the scepticism loaded into the word. “I thought you'd decided that your crewmates weren't all idiots.”

 _“Mine_ aren't. Maybe. Hunk's okay. He knows what he's doing. I just don't know how he wound up on a ship-track in the first place. He hates flying.”

“He's there to make you keep your flying smooth.”

“Right.”

They sat in silence again for a while. Shiro wriggled his fingers against the rock and listened to the wind. He wondered if the Blue Lion had been able to hear the wind, trapped in that cave for so long – or, the Blue Lion would have cared more about hearing the water. Maybe the caves had flooded when it rained. From some of Lance's comments, he thought Blue probably would have liked that.

“Are you really happy teaching?”

_No._

He wouldn't be happy until he got out of here. And then... then he didn't know what he'd be happy doing. His bond with the Black Lion had been severed, and Keith's was stronger than ever. More than that, Keith had grown into himself. He belonged with the Black Lion now – belonged at the head of Voltron. He had already grown into it so much, and Shiro couldn't bear to try and step back in, to limit Keith again, even if it had been a possibility. Which it wasn't.

None of which he could say to the person sitting beside him.

“Your first-year class was a third the size of this year's,” Shiro said instead. If the simulation was going to feed him the scenario then at least he could make use of it.

“Yeah?”

“The professors have all been shuffled around. It's because a lot of them have been moved to classified projects. You noticed the base got busier at the end of summer, right? Those officers, they're on the new projects, too. Iverson didn't put me on group combat sims because he got bored of teaching them. He got too busy. What's going on, it's big.”

“You think... more missions? A Kerberos recovery?”

“If it was something usual, they wouldn't need to hide it.”

“Trouble with the moon colonies again?”

“We'd hear about that on the news.”

“Then what?”

“I don't know.” Shiro swung his legs, kicked the face of the cliff beneath them. “It's probably going to blow up, though. And when it does, I'd rather be here than anywhere else.” He turned his head to look at Not-Keith. “Are you going to be here?”

“Yeah,” Not-Keith said, and it was with all the fire and determination of the real one.

Shiro couldn't stand it. He turned away and closed his eyes. He wanted to look at the stars – but if he did that, they'd swallow him whole.

  


The stars _kept_ calling to him, a ruthlessly gentle insistence that nonetheless contained no hints of urgency. He found himself wondering if it was the simulation, after all: skimming the universe felt more real than anything else in this place, and yet at the same time, it was absurd to think he could do so unaided. But he couldn't resist. More nights than not found him taking the bike out, or going up to the rooftop, falling into the sky and free of his body. Every time, it was a little bit harder to return.

He meandered between planets: temperate, hot, cold, diamond, ice, foam glass. Some of them could have been Kerberos. Some of them could have been Earth. He spun through a gas giant's hurricane, winds an order of magnitude past what any human engineering could endure. He swam through a cloud of alcohol, little more than a million molecules per cubic metre and smelling like rum. When he laughed, the joy of it bounced off of the ethyl groups and made them vibrate, a hum arising where no living thing had ever come before.

Life always drew him, a scarce gem but one that shone oh-so-bright. From this vantage he could see the megafauna of the universe, creatures so immense that human perception couldn't take them in all at once. Some were sickly with the stench of druidic magic. Countless more were as unconcerned by the Ten-Thousand Year Empire as a human would have been by an ant. Shiro marvelled at them as he drifted along the backs of Weblums, letting them carry him from system to system, a million-year journey condensed down to the time it took him to breathe out. In one galaxy, half the gas giants were populated by ethereal angels, whose three dozen eyes were each approximately the size of Earth. Light-year long, spindly-legged creatures sipped from Oort clouds like children catching raindrops on their tongues. Protean creatures lived in the deepest voids between galactic filaments, and he only ever saw them by their outline when they passed between him and a star.

He gave the rare white hole he found a respectful distance, but even so, he felt eyes watching him, the only eyes in the universe that ever looked back at him.

And then dawn would creep over the horizon and he'd fall back into himself, and it would be time for another day.

  


For the six-week evals, Shiro bowed to tradition and hiked the difficulty for his group sims classes, resulting in an high percentage of failures. Not-Keith and Not-Hunk's team was among them: Not-Keith got along with Not-Hunk surprisingly well, and Hunk got along along with everybody, but the third member of their crew, although an extremely successful and competent young woman, was no match for Pidge's talent – or Keith's. And Not-Keith was continuing to have problems with her, no matter how many times Shiro reminded him to have patience, reminded him, _You become responsible for more than just yourself._

Not-Lance's team passed, the best in the cargo-pilot class, but Not-Lance seemed so subdued about it after that Shiro pulled him aside later.

“You look pretty down after a run like that. Is anything wrong?”

Not-Lance looked up at him, and Shiro could see the evaluation. Once upon a time, Lance had told Shiro that he'd been his hero; that probably wasn't the case anymore after failing out of the Kerberos mission. But maybe he needed somebody to talk to badly enough, because he sighed and said, almost mumbling, “My teammates told me I was letting them down. They were right.”

“You did some great flying today,” said Shiro. “I'd say maybe you were letting yourself down.”

Not-Lance flushed.

“You wanted to be Keith's rival last year, didn't you?”

It took Not-Lance aback. “You know? I mean, yeah! I was – I wanted to be.” He sighed. “Great job there, McClain.”

“It's a good goal to work for. He's in the top spot in your year. If you drive yourself to be the best, you'll get results, even if you never beat him. But, setting goal like that doesn't mean you should consider any success less than that unworthy. Your flying today was the best I've ever seen from you – the best I've seen from anyone in your class. You need to recognize that and use that success to build on, not tear yourself down for it.”

That got him a thoughtful look and then a small smile. “Thanks, sir.”

 _Sir_. He'd never been Lance's instructor – Lance, almost always irreverent, had never called him _sir_ in his life. Shiro hid the grimace long enough to dismiss him, then turned away and scraped a hand over his face.

  


Not-Pidge wowed all of her instructors, just as real-Pidge must have done, and the next time Shiro encountered her on the roof, she was armed with an official second-year cadet's pass to the roof.

“You're still breaking curfew,” Shiro told her. The stars were right there, luring him to ignore her and fall upwards, outwards. “Scram unless you want to lose that rooftop privilege.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, packing up. He glanced casually over her shoulder. No VOLTRON standing out in underlines, and he couldn't make sense of anything else on her screen.

But after she'd stuffed her laptop in her bag and trudged back to the stairwell door, she paused. “Uh. Sir?”

“Yes, cadet?”

“You were the original pilot for the Kerberos mission, weren't you?”

Her voice was flat, and Shiro's heart nearly broke at it. It was so easy to picture her again as she was dragged away: _I'll find the truth! I'll never stop!_ What this year must have been like for her and Keith... he'd never found out when Keith had been expelled, how long he'd been on his own in the desert, but he knew how long Katie had been here, on her own, surrounded by people who didn't believe her and people who were actively covering up what had happened to her family. That endless anguished not-knowing, and here he was, and he could give her answers...

He hated this. Hated this place. Couldn't stand being here for one more second.

“Back to your dorm, cadet,” Shiro said, letting his voice ice over. “Now.”

She went.

Shiro tipped his head back, breathing ragged, and fell, up, _up_. All the bright points of the universe were too crowded, too occupied. He ignored them, fit himself into the spaces in-between, the vacuum where only light could cross. Then that was too much as well, and he fell onward, further, to the limits of the universe where space was still being defined.

In that primordial nothingness he found a reflection of himself, hiding against the edges of reality.

 _Who?_ he thought, and received the same in reply.

_I'm lost. I'm looking for my friends. My companion. I lost her._

The consciousness before him shared his grief, knew loss as well, for its own companion was beyond finding. Shiro embraced it, curling around and through it, letting their griefs commingle and offering his own compassion for its wounds. He showed his exile, a year of thought condensed down to nothing – nothing was all it really had been: trapped in a simulation, trapped in a tiny world doing nothing – and it showed him –

_Greed and possession and pride, dominance, a constant battering against nature and purpose, an order to submit!_

_Walls surrounding and enclosing. Physical walls meant nothing, and this Shiro understood intuitively just as well, but the request weighed down like chains: to hide away, to do nothing, to speak to no one and nothing until – until when?_

_The other pieces of herself torn away, scattered, curling into silence and slumber. Gone deaf. Unable to see past the walls that bound them._

_A promise like smoke: that one day the two tiny lives that she guarded, that guarded her in turn, would awake from their own slumber, and she would be whole. But she saw across space, not time, and watched as the darkness swept over the universe. Watched as subjugation took hold where she would have brought freedom. Watched as her companion turned upon her and everything that made up the core of her being. She could not stop him. Could not bring herself to turn upon him._

_Could not bear to be fully alone, her last bond severed._

Shiro's shock echoed between them.

It broke her reverie and she pulled away. Out of the darkness two great luminous eyes opened, staring into him, demanding to know how he had found her out here, at the very border of space itself, her territory where she alone ruled. Where even her companion could not follow.

 _No_ , Shiro thought. _No, you know me... you and I..._

The Black Lion slammed down one paw and galaxies trembled. She snarled, an awful, terrible sound that filled the empty void, and Shiro's scattered consciousness was flattened by her anger. He fell, down, into a place too small for her to follow. Pieces of himself sheared away, and hidden memory surfaced, the agony of Allura cutting him free – free of the Black Lion, free of _himself_. He no longer fit inside his own skin.

But he fell back into it anyway, and his mind – compressed, cut off, overwhelmed – slid into a darkness where there were no stars.

  


Shiro woke up with a headache.

Somebody was squeezing his shoulder. “Shiro? Shiro, wake up!”

He groaned and rolled over, onto his back, which might have been a mistake: the desert sun glared down from overhead, merciless in its intensity. His face hurt. _Everything_ hurt, everything felt _off_ , like he'd been pulled out of himself, shaken until his teeth rattled, and then stuffed back in upside-down. Which wasn't too far off from what had happened.

A body blocked out the sun, leaning over him, and Keith's features swam into view. “Shiro? You've got blood all over your face.”

“Ow,” said Shiro. He stared upward at – at Keith.

The Black Lion hadn't known him.

The Black Lion hadn't known anyone except Zarkon, hadn't left the castle, hadn't yet been found.

That was real.

So was this.

“Shiro! Shiro, c'mon, breathe – slow down. You're okay,” Keith said, and Shiro realized he was hyperventilating. He reached up, clinging to Keith's arm as Keith clung back, looking panicked but trying his best anyway, letting Shiro match the timing of his own breaths.

“Keith,” Shiro choked out. “It's really you.”

“Yeah, I'm here.”

“I'm sorry.”

“I'm fine – ”

“No, you don't understand – everything, this past year – ” All the time he'd spent treating Keith like an alien, like a threat, like he wasn't real – Oh, god. They were all here. Keith, Katie, Lance and Hunk. All his friends. But not as _his_ friends.

He'd been convinced he'd gotten captured again. This was worse. What had _happened?_ How had he gotten here? And if he was here – in the past? In an alternate reality? – what had happened to them?

“Shiro,” said Keith, pulling him back from the verge of another freakout. “Are you – we should get you to Medical.”

“No!” It was an instinctive reaction brought about by the memories of restraints – two kinds. He couldn't let himself fall inward again, not when he knew now that there was so much more to the universe out there. Not when he knew he wasn't trapped in his head already. “No, I – I'm good.”

“You were passed out on the roof. You missed morning classes.” Keith paused. “And you've got blood all over your face.”

Shiro brought up a hand – _it was really his hand!_ his brain wanted to shriek. _Really his!_ – and scrubbed at his face. Dried blood broke off over his fingers and he grimaced, then touched his nose experimentally. It felt a bit sore, but it wasn't broken. “Just a nosebleed. Landed on my face, I think. I'm good, I was just – tired.”

“Shiro...”

“Please, Keith.”

It was playing dirty, doing that.

But Keith nodded reluctantly. How could he possibly still have so much faith in Shiro after the last year? “If you're sure. Shiro, what – what happened?”

Good question.

 _I've somehow travelled back in time, and spent the past year thinking you were an alien trying to get into my head,_ he thought, and had to clamp down on a hysterical giggle before it could leave his throat. _That_ would reassure Keith. _I got captured by aliens, and then I escaped. You rescued me, and we fought aliens for a while, and then I died._ That would go over even better. Better just stick to the time-travel part for now. If he could just figure out a way to do that so that Keith would believe him.

Keith would probably believe him anyway, but Shiro owed him better than being forced to accept a crazy tale just because it was _Shiro's_ crazy tale.

“I can't explain it. Not yet. Please, Keith, just give me some time.”

“Sure,” Keith said immediately. “But – if it's something medical...”

“It's not. It's just. It.” He shook his head. “I'm sorry, Keith. I've been such an ass to you this year. You deserve better.”

“You haven't been – ”

“Yeah, I have.” He pulled himself up to a sitting position. “It's had nothing to do with you and at some point I'll give you the full explanation why. When I can.”

Keith's eyes were soft with understanding. Whatever had Shiro done to earn that much loyalty from him? He couldn't be worth that kind of devotion.

“Okay,” said Keith. “I trust you.”


	6. Chapter 6

Shiro ended up going to Medical anyway, because he'd missed his morning classes without telling anyone in advance. Fortunately, Keith reminded him that he still had blood on his face before they left the roof. Unfortunately, it wasn't just from the nosebleed. He'd managed to scrape some skin off of his nose and cheek as well when he did his faceplant, and he'd bruised his knees enough that it was mildly painful to walk.

He came up with a story about oversleeping, headaches and recent bouts of insomnia. But for his face, he couldn't manage to come up with anything better than, “I wasn't looking where I was going, and I walked into a door.”

“Uh-huh,” said the attending, flicking through his file, and promptly scheduled him for a series of brain scans. Shiro sighed, cancelled his afternoon classes, and submitted to his fate.

But when the necessities of keeping his job were done – because, somehow, this was actually his life and actually his job and he didn't want to suddenly lose it without first figuring out what he was doing – well, then he had to figure out what he was doing.

He skipped dinner and went to his quarters instead, stretched out on his bed and

fell

up

outward

The sun was but another star, after all. Vision was an illusion. He'd seen through the Black Lion's eyes, before, and now through his own, far beyond what the human optic nerve should be able to process. He blinked and there was the universe, Great Walls stretching away into the eons, and he picked one and followed it until he came to the edges of the expansion, the starless void where the Black Lion roamed.

She was waiting for him, impatient, growling low at his apology. He hadn't meant to go – he hadn't realized what was going on, before. He still wasn't sure, but he wanted to show her.

He held still, opening up his thoughts, and –

– That was a different kind of falling, entirely. An exposure of history more detailed than voice could ever manage; his thoughts and dreams and fears all laid bare for her perusal. She drank it in, lingering on those aspects of him most important to her: not to her as she had been, his Lion, but to her as she was now, long-betrayed by Zarkon and still grieving the loss.

 _I'm sorry,_ he told her, as she witnessed that end, and he felt her curl against him in her grief.

  


When he broke down the problems that were too big to contemplate whole – time travel, the Empire, the witch – the most immediate aspect of all of them was a lack of knowledge.

The Garrison clearly knew that something sinister had happened to the Kerberos mission. There was clearly a coverup going on, one beyond a failed shuttle. The crew hadn't been snatched from deep within the Kuiper Belt this time: they'd been grabbed from a region of clear space that GLIM had been able to take a good long look at, later. Maybe GLIM had been able to view it all along. If the Garrison knew what had happened, that might have changed their response drastically from Shiro's original timeline.

All the frantic build-up made for pathetic preparation for war with the Galra. If that war came to their doorstep, Earth didn't stand a chance. Not without Voltron.

Last time, the Galra hadn't known that a Lion was on Earth until just before he'd escaped. Ulaz had freed him just ahead of the investigating cruiser. But he didn't know how the Empire had found out. He doubted it could have had anything to do with him, though. Or, rather, he hoped it didn't. If so, he could count on having at least half a year to act before the Galra would arrive.

In this timeline. In his original timeline... he had no idea what had happened to send him here, or how to get back. Or even if he could try to go back, let alone _should_. He missed his friends so much, but... it didn't seem fair to simply vanish from this timeline now – not to Matt, Commander Holt, and Betsy Choi. From what he vaguely recalled of the theory, at least one major possibility was that this timeline hadn't existed until he'd gone back in time, which would mean that the people here were just as much his responsibility as the people in his original timeline, if not more so. In his original timeline, Keith was the Black Paladin. Zarkon and Lotor were defeated. Haggar... Shiro shuddered.

The Black Lion didn't seem to understand how time travel worked, either – or if she did, she wasn't telling. He almost wished Slav was around, since if anyone knew, Slav would. Except that the odds of getting a usable answer from Slav were probably something like 3%, so never mind that.

Ultimately, he needed expert help.

And he owed Pidge answers.

  


Finding time to talk to Pidge was easier said than done, however. Shiro checked all of usual haunts he could think of, anyplace that somebody might go to be alone by themselves, but she wasn't in any of them no matter when he checked: noon, middle of the night, first thing in the morning. He started looking for other out-of-the-way areas, and found himself walking in on more cadets – or, occasionally, instructors – in more compromising positions than he'd ever wanted to see any of them in, but no Pidge. He didn't want to just approach her openly: for one, she wasn't taking any of his classes, so there was no reason why he should even know who she was. Considering her flimsy cover story at the Garrison, he didn't want to call any attention to her.

Matters weren't helped by the approach of winter evals. These mattered to the cadets: they'd be swapped around in their tracks based on what he wrote. It weighed so little compared to the future of the universe, but... Shiro couldn't bring himself to half-ass them, not when he could see them all as real people, now, with real hopes and dreams. It filled up his spare hours, until he was left wandering around after hours with one eye looking for a place where Pidge would be able to find a satellite signal, while his other eye was glued to a tablet, reviewing the day's sim runs.

Two weeks later, he finally figured out that he couldn't find her because she'd gotten saddled with endless PT after being caught out-of-bounds after curfew a third time. He hadn't heard about the first two, not that he should have. He felt a stab of guilt: it had been his fault she'd been denied the roof, where she probably would have gone unnoticed. For all that it was easy to get up there, very few people bothered.

Some nights he still went up to the roof. The night-time sky was pretty to human eyes, no matter that the soul knew the stars were ever-present, roof over his head or not. He did make sure to lie down first, whether he ventured onto the roof or stayed in his room. He fell out of himself, into the cosmos, searching for three tiny lights in the dark.

But humans were so tiny, compared to the universe. He could soar past a thousand civilizations and see the shape of them, but anything smaller than a weblum was near impossible to see individually. He tried practising, focusing on Earth, but usually by the time he got a hold of himself he'd already been swept out light-millennia, direction unknown, and couldn't get back except by falling, chaotic and uncontrolled.

The universe was so large. A needle in a haystack did not compare. Shiro searched and was quietly amazed that Pidge had ever managed to find her family, the first time around; quietly mournful, because he was afraid that this time she might not be so lucky.

  


The day before classes ended for winter break, Iverson summoned Shiro to his office.

It wasn't unexpected – Shiro was behind on his paperwork despite his best efforts, and the fighter-class group sims had always been Iverson's baby. What was unexpected was the presence of Nguyen and a trio of officers that Shiro didn't recognize, making the room almost crowded. Two of them were large and burly and clearly trained. The third, a woman, wasn't wearing rank tabs, but she had a seat while Nguyen didn't.

“At ease,” Iverson said as he entered, indicating the third chair. “Take a seat.”

Which left him seated, facing away from the door, with the guards and Nguyen all behind him. Shiro sat, feeling every muscle in his body tense. One of the guards moved – he could hear him, even if he was out of Shiro's line of sight – and the door clicked shut.

“Sir?”

“Calm down, Lieutenant,” said the woman, which did nothing whatsoever to soothe his nerves. “You're not in trouble. This is a standard interview that we'll be conducting with most of the base.”

Sure, thought Shiro, glancing between her and Iverson. And they also had some lovely beachfront property for sale next to the Garrison.

“What do you know about Voltron?”

Months of fudging facts to the simulation – what he'd _thought_ was the simulation – let him keep his face straight. He hoped. “I'm not sure what that is, ma'am.” Inside, his thoughts raced. Were the Galra already approaching Earth? It was too soon! He thought he'd have months, yet.

“Take a guess.”

“It sounds like a... particle collider?”

“You don't recall ever hearing it before?”

“No, ma'am.”

Her face twisted in some expression he couldn't identify before settling back to a blank mask. Had she bought it? He couldn't tell. She and Iverson shared some long look, and then Iverson pulled around one of the screens on his desk.

It showed a video, paused at an image of Shiro – white-haired. Restrained, tied down to a hospital bed. His right hand was in a thick cast. A woman sat beside the bed, and after a moment Shiro identified her as Dr. Bensham, the Kerberos medical lead.

Iverson hit play, and sound filtered through the room. The audio was a lot higher quality than the visuals, and Shiro had no difficulty understanding his own words, although they came out a lot more slurred than he remembered. He'd been drugged.

“ _You stuck me in this simulation and tried to convince me it was the Garrison. It's not working. I remember who I am, I remember Voltron, and if you don't let me go before my friends get here, Voltron isn't going to be happy with you.”_

Iverson hit pause again, and Shiro found himself pathetically grateful. If he remembered correctly, past the haze of drugs and exhaustion, he was pretty sure that what had happened next was a panic attack. He didn't want to see that, knowing that it was real, it had been all along.

He licked his lips. When he spoke, his voice was shaking, and he couldn't control it all the way. Damn it. Damn it, it had been easier when he could think it was all fake.

“That's from when – I was in the middle of a mental breakdown. Ma'am. I have no idea what that was supposed to mean.”

“You must have heard of it before, to start spouting about it then.”

“I – I was crazy and hallucinating. I was convinced everybody had been replaced by aliens. I tried to punch a steel door down.” Had that been a flicker of interest when he'd mentioned aliens? Crap. But all his sessions with Nguyen were well-documented.

“We're not going to punish you if you overheard something you shouldn't have, Lieutenant. We just want the truth.”

The truth. Should he?

He hadn't seriously considered it before. When he'd crashed back to Earth... months from now... he'd aimed for the Garrison, planned on telling everybody he could find. He hadn't worried about being called crazy, not then, when he had the proof of a wrecked alien pod to back him up. Instead he'd woken up in restraints, and they hadn't listened at all before putting him back under.

 _Pilot error_ was stamped across Choi's file, just as it had been across Shiro's. No, Shiro couldn't trust the Garrison. Not with Voltron, and not with himself.

“I don't know, ma'am. I don't recall ever hearing anything about it.”

“Hmm.” She settled back, eyes narrowed.

Iverson turned the screen back around and nodded to someone standing behind Shiro. He jumped, flinching sideways in the chair, but it was Nguyen who stepped forward, not either of the guards.

“Shiro, it may be that you just can't remember where you heard it. You and I have talked about the possibility of similar things before, that you might have forgotten something that may have led to your episode. Do you remember our discussions about hypnosis?”

Shiro gripped the armrests of the chair. “I remember I said no. I don't need my brain to go – fuzzy, again. You agreed.”

“I did.” She didn't look happy now. “At the time you were getting stable on the medication and, if you decided the cause was less important than managing the effects, that was up to you. But this is really important. Will you try it? Please?”

He looked between her, Iverson, and the still-unidentified officer. “Do I actually get a choice?”

It was Iverson who answered. “We need to know, Lieutenant.”

And this was exactly why he couldn't trust them enough to tell them. He laughed, and it came out wild and louder than he'd intended. “This is crazy. I mean, this is literally a crazy idea. No. I _can't_. Doctor, you told me hypnosis would need me to cooperate. I'm sorry, but – ”

He was moving on the last word, starting up from his chair, ready to grab Nguyen and get her between him and the guards. He didn't even make it fully to his feet: white lightning arced down his spine and his protests turned into a cry of pain. Taser – he hadn't seen it, stupid, _stupid._ All his muscles spasmed and sent him sprawling from the chair, yanking the electrodes from the back of his shoulder, but a second taser fired and caught him on the leg. Coppery warmth flooded his mouth. None of his limbs would obey him.

_Get up, damnit, you've fought through worse!_

There were hands yanking at his uniform, and then the sting of a needle. “No,” Shiro protested, slurring the words. Blood dripped from his mouth – had he bitten his tongue? “Please, listen to me...”

They never had before.

Shiro took the only escape open to him, and fell out of himself, out of his body, and off the face of the Earth.

  


Tidally-locked planets burned and froze in turns, their tumultuous cores ripping at their surfaces. Showers of hydrochloric acid watered fluorine-based plants tended by ever-collapsing, ever-rebuilding creatures with no central body that Shiro could see. An ice planet, shoved from its system a billion years ago by an exploding star, was captured into an erratic orbit around two binaries, boiling when it came too near, leaving trails of steam tens of thousands of kilometers long. A blue supergiant, only six million years old, blew into a supernova, scattering itself into a superheated nebula light-decades wide.

Shiro sympathized.

He floated on the outbound solar currents, hopping from star to star. All so tiny, compared to the size of the universe. All so enormous, compared to three missing humans, two Alteans, and his physical form, so far away and unimportant.

On the edge of his awareness, a world died.

Shiro – turned, for lack of a better word – and drew near. Was this – ? No, it was too soon for the Galra to to have that weapon. Everything was progressing faster than it should. But as he approached he realized that none of the world's lifeforce remained, at all, anywhere: it had not been harvested. It had been snuffed out, without mercy or even purpose. A curious, calm wrath suffused him. He dove inward, down, his ability to _see_ more acute than it ever had been, and saw –

Yes, that was her. Glowing yellow eyes snapped up. On the other platforms, bird-like masks tilted in a silent, predatory question.

“What is this?” Haggar rasped.

Shiro fled, again, exploding into a billion particles just as that dying star had done, just as a billion other dying stars were doing. Mindless terror gnawed at him, the knowledge that she couldn't touch him overridden by the certainty that she _would_ , that if anyone could find a way, it was _her_. He fled to the far edges of the universe and found himself before the Black Lion, babbling out the tale, his sense of self roiling too turbulently to have it make any sense.

Black reached out one cosmic paw and cuffed him, sending him falling sideways, and somehow into better coherence.

 _She is out there and she is evil,_ Shiro whispered.

The Black Lion knew this.

_Help me stop her. Please._

Sorrowfully, Black knelt beside him, pressing against him as if they were two physical beings. She could not. She needed a Companion, a being small enough to see the pieces of the universe from the inside. Her own vision was too vast. If she moved without guidance, she might crush a thousand thousand lives without knowing.

_I was yours before. I can be again._

A rumbling purr shook the universe, soothing against the bitterness of truth. He thought himself small? He, who looked upon stars and thought of them as tiny? His mind would not fit inside her own. Whatever he had been, he was the wrong shape and density now, stretched as vast and gossamer-thin as any nebula. They could neither of them help the other; whatever might have been was gone.

 _Then I'll find you a new pilot,_ he promised her, although his own heart was breaking. He tore himself away, and dropped –

back

down

into himself, where his chest _hurt_ and he had to cough, couldn't stop coughing even though there was something in his throat, blocking him from breathing. Air was abruptly shoved into his lungs and then it was too much, and he tried to curl up but then there were hands on him, voices speaking, and something was yanked up and out of his throat.

Shiro coughed, and coughed, and somebody else put an oxygen mask over his face. Clarity bloomed as he breathed in, but deserted him again almost immediately. “What happened?” he tried to ask, and it came out slurred, his bitten tongue swollen around the words.

“Shiro,” said someone, pushing aside a doctor – it was the woman. The officer without rank tabs. “Shiro, look at me. What do you know about Voltron?”

He blinked back at her. He was still drugged, he thought. Whatever it was made him so very, very tired. “I don't know,” he said. Whatever would happen would do so without him. He could never be a paladin again. “'s all gone...”

“Get the fuck away from him!” someone shouted, and Shiro squeezed his eyes shut. Something wet trickled down his cheek. Was he crying? He didn't mean to be. He should have known... should expected something... like this...

  


Shiro woke up with a headache and cottonmouth.

He blinked blearily up at the ceiling. No, wall – he was propped up, in a bed, staring at an ominously closed door. Fluorescent lights: check. Beeping machines: check. Antiseptic smell: check. He tested his limbs surreptitiously, and to his surprise found that he wasn't restrained. Huh.

He sat up, slowly, shoving back the sheet covering him. Agony in his chest told him that he had cracked or broken ribs, probably more than one. He pushed it away. Aside from the oxygen mask, he had an IV in his arm and pulse-ox clipped to his finger. Somebody had changed him into scrubs. He wondered who it had been. He wondered if the door would be locked from the outside.

What exactly had he said? There'd been something, when he'd fallen back into himself – the rankless woman, she'd asked him something, and he couldn't remember what he'd answered. Crap. Sitting up had redoubled the throbbing in his skull.

He slid himself out of the bed, wincing as the soles of his feet hit the cold tile, and then again as he stumbled slightly. Disorientation, compromised balance. The discomfort was filed away, compartmentalized, as his brain fell into a too-familiar mindset. He needed to get out of here. He needed to –

The door clicked open and Shiro slid into a combat stance, pulling the pulse-ox and the IV out in the same movement. Blood trickled down his arm, and he clamped his spare hand over it – he would need both arms, shortly, but if he could slow the bleeding with pressure for a bit –

“Woah.” The person at the door – Dr. Bensham? What was she doing here? – leaned back. “Easy, Shiro. I'm on your side.”

Shiro considered her. White coat. Laptop. No guards behind her. He'd been left unrestrained. “Yeah?” he asked, his entire body poised on her answer, ready to lunge forward and just go through her, get out of here. He was stupid even to pause. They'd already caught him off guard once.

“You were detained by officers from one of the special projects,” she said, slowly and calmly. He couldn't see if there was anyone behind her. Surely, they'd have a camera, at least, reinforcements on the way – “They drugged you without your permission, and you had a very bad reaction to it. They called Medical, and when it became apparent what they'd done, they were arrested. They're still in detainment now. You're safe now.”

“Sure.”

Her expression softened, and she took a small step back, to the side. “Shiro, you can leave if you want. I'm not going to keep you here if you want to sign out AMA. But I'd appreciate it if you'd let me check that the drugs are out of your system, and see what state your ribs are in now. There were a couple rounds of CPR. I know you've got a few that are broken. I'd like to help.”

It was like he was back in the simulation all over again, confronted by aliens whose motives he didn't understand and couldn't trust. “Why should I believe you?”

“Is there someone I can call for you, who you'd believe?”

“Keith. Keith Kogane.”

She looked taken aback. “The cadet?”

“Yeah, him.”

She shrugged and fished her cell phone out of a pocket. “I guess you can be certain he's not part of any special projects. Lindsey – hi. Can you please page the main campus and get Cadet Keith Kogane down here? Then send him to Lt. Shirogane's room. No, right away. Thanks.” She hung up and held her phone toward Shiro, who found himself eyeing it like it was a rigged blaster. “You can call him directly, yourself.”

He took the phone but didn't dial. Keith didn't have a phone. But hers was in one of those extra-rugged, steel drop cases, and he was pretty sure it would make a better weapon than the IV pole in a pinch – less unwieldy. The date and time on the front read 4:45 PM on the last day of classes. He'd missed all of his. Ah, well. Let Iverson try and complain about it.

“Is this right?” he asked, holding up the phone so the front faced her.

“Yes. You've been here for nearly a full day. When the medics got to you, you were in cardiac arrest, but we managed to get you stabilized pretty quickly. Would you like to sit down? You're looking a bit unsteady.”

“I'm fine,” Shiro bit out. He shifted his feet and forced himself to stillness. Revealing weakness was unacceptable.

“Okay,” said Bensham. “I'd like to sit down. Would you mind if I just sat here?” She indicated the floor, and when Shiro nodded dumbly, lowered herself down to sit right on the floor, out of the way of the door, wincing a bit. “These floors are too cold. Alright. Is it okay if we just wait for Keith to get here?”

Abruptly, Shiro felt foolish, wobbling on his feet, wielding a phone like a weapon, while this fifty-something woman sat on the floor across from him. Ridiculous. She'd done all of the physicals for the Kerberos team; he knew her, had trusted her. He'd trusted the Garrison, too, but – the Garrison was an institution, she was a person.

“Okay,” he said, lowering the phone. It took an effort, more effort than it had to keep his arms up, even though his ribs were screaming at him. “I could maybe use that chair.”

“Sure,” said Bensham, scrambling to her feet. “The bed – or, okay, here, there's a stool.” She pulled one out from under the bed and pumped a foot-pedal on it, then helped Shiro sit down. Without her steadying hand, Shiro thought he might have listed to the side and had it roll out from under him. “Okay, there you are. Do you mind if I get you a band-aid? It's just in this drawer.”

She kept talking, through getting his arm and hand cleaned up and then taking his vitals. It made Shiro feel pathetically grateful. It wasn't as if she was doing anything more invasive than shining a light in his eyes or sticking a thermometer in his ear. Even when she checked his ribs she barely touched him. By the time Keith showed up, panting like he'd sprinted the whole way, Shiro was beginning to feel like he'd been ridiculous.

“Can I send in a nurse to get those samples from you?” Bensham asked kindly, and Shiro flushed and nodded. “It'll be just a few minutes.” She left, leaving the door cracked open behind her.

“What happened?” Keith asked immediately. “Are you okay? Everything's been crazy today. The whole Garrison's in a lockdown.”

Shiro sighed and slumped, fighting the urge to breathe shallowly. Bensham had offered him painkillers, a mild, over-the-counter type that wouldn't make his head fuzzy or interfere with other any leftover drugs in his system. With Keith here now, Shiro was beginning to regret turning down the offer. Being unable to breathe properly did nothing to help the light-headedness, and it was difficult to try and figure out what to say. What was safe to say. Private room or no, Bensham's reassurance or no, this room could easily be bugged. He didn't want to make Keith a target – or himself more of one. Especially not while the Garrison was in lockdown.

“It's a long story,” he said finally. “I'm still sorting it out. What happened with your classes today?”

“Yours were cancelled,” said Keith. He looked unhappy about that. “Have you been here all day?”

“Since last night. Iverson been around at all?”

“Not that I've seen, but... we've been confined to dorms all day, when we don't have classes or meals.”

“Yeah.” Shiro rubbed at his eyes. “Something's happening at the Garrison, Keith. I know you were planning on staying over break, but... it might be best to clear out for a while. All these secretive projects... I think there's some kind of power play going on. I can spot you motel fare.”

Keith's frown deepened into anger. “I can take care of myself,” he started to say, a real bite to his words, but then he cut himself off, turning his head toward the door. A beat later, Shiro heard the nurse's footsteps coming down the hall.

Keith had always had excellent hearing, better than anyone else's.

Shiro's hand spasmed, nearly tearing the sheets on the bed. Immediately, Keith turned back with a look of concern, and Shiro didn't have time to hide his expression, barely got it back under control before the nurse entered, a short, older man with a gentle smile and plenty of explanations. Shiro barely followed it all, numbly thinking, _Idiot, idiot,_ at himself, until the needed blood had been drawn and he'd been directed to go use the washroom for the remaining samples. He did so in a daze, washing his hands and staring at himself in the mirror.

The Garrison was looking for information on Voltron. They had to be picking up Galra signals, had to have some idea about the Galra themselves. And Keith was _half-Galra._

He needed to be really, really careful with this.


	7. Chapter 7

Leaving Medical wasn't quite as easy as Bensham had made it sound – or maybe that was just because he had agreed to play along with this, still. She came in with the preliminary test results, clucked over him in a way that was familiar from all the Kerberos prep, and offered him the painkillers again, which he accepted with relief, not that they seemed to do much. Then there was another officer who wanted to talk to him before he left, a Commander Davis, and Shiro nearly bolted before he realized that Davis was an MPI, and he really did just want an account of the previous night's events. Davis let both Bensham and Keith stay throughout the interview, and Shiro wasn't sure if he was relieved or humiliated to be telling the story in front of witnesses. He was pretty sure Keith could take out Davis if it came to a fight, and that made the interview bearable. But he couldn't look Keith in the eye during or after.

“Alright, Lieutenant,” Davis concluded finally. “I'll keep you apprised of the final outcome, although I can't promise any particulars. Admiral Kabirii will be taking over command of the Garrison for the foreseeable future. My advice to you would be to get out of town, take a road trip – just keep your mouth shut and your phone on. I doubt you'll be needed to give any further input, but something may come up.”

“Yes, sir,” Shiro agreed.

“As your doctor, _my_ advice to you would be to not take your bike,” Bensham said firmly. “Take a car. Let someone else drive. And stay close to a hospital.” She sighed. “If you're finished with him, Commander, I need to speak with the Lieutenant about his outpatient care.”

That pretty much killed Keith's objections to the road trip. It was too late to leave that evening, so Shiro sent Keith back to his dorm with a signed pass in order to pack, and told him to meet at the garage in the morning at 0600. Then he retreated to his own room, weary and wary both. There were no lurking surprises waiting for him when he opened the door, but he couldn't manage to feel relaxed there. He pulled some old sports wraps out and wound them around his ribs, slowly and painfully, but when it was done it was at least a little bit better. Bensham would probably disapprove, but – between stronger pain meds and potential pneumonia, Shiro would go with the risk of more time dealing with doctors over the certainty.

He didn't sleep. But then, he didn't sleep much at all, anymore.

  


In the morning, he signed out one of the Garrison's hovercars, checking off a due-back date two weeks longer than the maximum and ignoring the dirty look the duty officer gave him. Apparently she didn't consider it worth picking a fight over, though, because she countersigned, and shortly thereafter he had the keys and his duffle was in the back seat.

Keith looked disappointed when he saw it. Shiro eyed him, and asked, “What, you wanted one of the fast response vehicles?” which got him one of Keith's sliver-wide grins.

Keith insisted on driving, and Shiro found himself half-dozing as they took the main road toward town. “Your flying really has gotten smoother,” he said drowsily. Keith had always been exceptional on timing, speed, and control, but that hadn't meant he'd cared at all about his passenger's comfort.

Keith snorted. “Hard not to, or else it's vomit o'clock.”

“Remind me to thank Hunk later.”

“Thank him by scheduling fewer sims with blown stabilizers.”

“He's gotten so much better at repairing those quickly, though.”

“He's starting to think you hate him.”

Shiro blinked. “Really?”

“...Not really, I guess. He complains a lot, though.”

“Hm. You guys haven't gotten any more of those scenarios than usual for the course, trust me.”

In town, Shiro pulled his head out of the sky long enough to hook his phone up to the car's computer and run a quick program to hack the GPS. Keith watched curiously, his eyebrows creeping upward.

“Don't look so surprised,” Shiro told him. “It's pretty standard. They change the security programming every so often and it puts a stop to it for about a week before there's a new cracker program circulating.”

“And everybody just knows about it?”

“All the seniors, or anyone who was one recently. How do you think they manage to sneak out to the town all the time? You'd have found out about it soon enough – ” Shiro stopped. What-ifs and contingencies piled up in his head, carrying far more weight than a stupid cracker program.

Keith misunderstood his sudden pause. “If I had any actual friends among my classmates,” he finished. He didn't sound bitter, just a bit wry.

“No. That... really isn't what I'm worried about.” He shook his head. “I thought you liked Hunk.”

Keith made a thoughtful face.

“Come on. We need some supplies. You get to carry the heavy stuff.”

“All the stuff, period,” Keith said, with the firmness of somebody who had been paying way more attention to Bensham's discharge instructions than Shiro had.

  


They hadn't discussed their ultimate destination, but when Shiro blinked open his eyes to the last rays of dying sunlight, he wasn't surprised to find the car parked outside the falling-down tumble that had once been the Kogane home. He was surprised to see how long the shadows were, though. The place wasn't that far from the Garrison. Keith must have taken a much more sedate route to the place than usual. Either that, or Shiro had just been asleep – or whatever – for quite a while. Keith was nowhere in sight, now.

He levered himself out of the car with a wince. His last dose of painkillers had been hours ago, and sometime in the last few hours he'd developed a crick in his neck that was sending twinges down his spine every time he moved his head to the left. He rolled his shoulders, gingerly stretched his limbs as far as his ribs would allow, and went in search of Keith.

Shiro found him out around back, setting up the rented tent a couple yards away from the old hand-pump. Wet red earth at the base of the pump proved that it still worked, at least.

“Did you test the water?”

“It's fine.” Keith stopped scowling at his mess of cords and tarpaulin long enough to give Shiro a once-over. “You okay? You crashed... really hard.”

“Mm. Did you actually test the water with a sampler or did you just try some and not get sick yet?”

Snorting, Keith tossed Shiro the small booklet he was holding – instructions, Shiro saw. “I checked the pH and everything. It's fine. I was out here this summer, did some work then.”

Shiro hadn't known that. Wouldn't have cared at the time, if he had. “I'm sorry. I'd have come with you.” He frowned. “How did you not die of heat exhaustion out here?”

“Slept during the day. And it's fine, Shiro. I wanted to check it out on my own.” He gestured at the pile of tent. “Tell me how to set this up. I've never done one of these before.”

“It'd help if it wasn't half inside-out. You didn't have one this summer?”

“Nah. Didn't need it.”

“Don't really need one now. I'm not exactly the expert on tents.”

Keith sighed. “The house is kinda still a wreck.”

Shiro stepped closer to him and put a hand on his shoulder. “It's still standing. And you've got a couple weeks to work on it now. I'll, um, direct.”

That got him a huff of laughter, but underneath Shiro's hand Keith was still with tension. For a moment, it didn't make sense, and then it did – how long ago had Shiro stopped casually reaching out to Keith, when he hadn't realized it _was_ Keith?

This still wasn't his Keith, in some critical ways. Two years on a space whale – and Shiro had never managed to stay awake long enough to get the full story – had left Keith changed in subtle ways, and Shiro could have spent a lifetime on re-learning him. Keith had come back grounded in his skin, while Shiro felt like he was falling out of his own. But they'd had so little time, only weeks between Allura pulling him from the Black Lion and Shiro winding up here.

This Keith wasn't his Keith, except in the ways that he was. Shiro smiled at him tentatively, and got a softly fond look in return. This wasn't the Keith who'd spent a year in the desert tracking Shiro's return, but he was the Keith who would have.

“We're gonna be setting it up by flashlight, at this rate,” Keith said, looking back at the so-called tent, and the moment was broken.

  


They camped out under the stars that night. The next morning, Shiro came back to himself to the sounds of footsteps on stone. He pulled himself up from the mound of bags and supplies that Keith had stacked up to give Shiro something to lean on, and saw that in the growing eastern light Keith was practising knife drills. The sunlight glinted off of the blade in rapid, rhythmic flashes, turning the alien steel a bloody red.

So Keith had the knife here. That was a relief. In his panic over Keith himself, he'd forgotten to ask.

“You should really wear shoes while you do that,” he called, when the sun was high enough that the air was heating up and the moment no longer felt quite so poised with meaning.

Keith wiped sweat off of his face. “There was a scorpion in mine. I felt bad for it.”

“Heh.”

“You ever do much knife-fighting?”

Shiro blinked at the question. It wasn't the kind of thing Keith was prone to asking, but Keith was looking at him assessingly. “Basics. More with a sword.” All the wrong sizes and weights for what he'd wound up with in the arena, but oh, how lucky he'd been to have the foundations.

“We should spar, when your ribs are better. Been a while.”

Shiro paused, considering this Keith against another. They'd occasionally sparred in hand-to-hand in the gym, when he'd still thought Keith was Not-Keith, when he he'd been trying so hard to not care what would happen that he'd managed to convince himself he didn't. It would matter, now. “Yeah. I guess.”

It got him another contemplative look, making his shoulders itch. Without meaning to, Shiro crossed his arms, then had to uncross them and instead wrap them around himself when his ribs protested. “Yeah,” he said. “It'll be a while, though. What've you got for an invalid to do all day while you make like Bob the Builder?”

The answer wasn't much, which was – good. Earlier in the year Shiro had been going nuts from lack of anything to do, but then he'd thought he was trapped in his own head and nothing mattered. Now he had occasional difficulty staying in his own head, and a backlog of sims review on his tablet before he signed off on the final class placements. The days passed languidly, and he spent the nights looking for the Holts and Choi, thinking of the Black Lion's difficulty in _seeing_ and trying to narrow his own vision.

Keith was patient with him. Shiro tried chipping in on chores, but his ribs disliked him more often than not, and Keith disliked seeing him in pain enough that Shiro found himself following Bensham's instructions regardless of whether he meant to or not. He made one valiant attempt at cooking, and then Keith declared that since Shiro _had_ paid for all their camping supplies and rentals, over Keith's own objections, it was only fair that Keith cooked, no, really, he insisted.

They never did get the tent set up. After a week Keith declared the house free of nesting snakes, scorpions, foxes, spiders, jumping cacti, and shrews, and unlikely to fall down on their heads if they spent the night indoors. They kept camping outdoors anyway. The desert night was chilly, but the house's insulation had been worn down by time and wind and the aforementioned list of squatters, and it didn't have any better heating than the campfire that they built in the evenings. And outside the sky stretched forever. It was difficult to remain indoors: there was an energy here in the desert, a hum of anticipation that beckoned them to open their eyes and _look_.

It was ridiculous that it took Shiro as long as it did to realize that it wasn't just the call of the night sky, not anymore. But he had difficulty focusing on Earth, still. It was only as he fell back into his skin and caught a flash of Blue that he realized what was going on.

“I'm an idiot,” he whispered.

Across from him, over the coals of the dying campfire, Keith stirred in his sleeping bag. “Huh?”

“Go back to sleep.”

But Keith sat up and yawned. “Wasn't sleeping. Why're you an idiot?”

“Do you feel that?”

Keith was silent for long enough that Shiro knew the answer even before he finally spoke. “Yeah. The energy, right? It's... I thought I was imagining it, at first.”

“You're not.”

“We could both be imagining it.”

“We're not.” Shiro considered that. “Or maybe we are. The mind is bigger than the body. Our imagination determines our reality.”

“You sound like you're still dreaming.”

“That doesn't mean it's untrue.”

There was only fondness in Keith's voice as he lay back, becoming a shapeless shadow again. “Go back to sleep, Shiro.”

“I don't think I ever woke up.” He couldn't make himself say the words too loudly, lest the night break open. “Keith... there's so much I have to tell you. But I don't have proof for any of it yet. Except that energy.”

“I trust you.”

“There's some things you shouldn't have to take on faith.”

“That's up to me, isn't it?” Keith paused. “If you're ready to tell me... I'm listening.”

Shiro considered. Keith was right – he was his own person, he could decide his own mind. But Shiro knew it would hurt. In the grip of dementia, Shiro's grandmother had said so many things that weren't true, about his grandfather or the postman or even Shiro himself, that he'd learned never to take any of it to heart, no matter how deep it cut. But it was also only then that she began to ever speak of his father, and it had been so hard not to cling to every crumb she'd offered.

Yet that was him, and about him. Shiro pictured meeting the Blade of Marmora months from now, and knew Keith would be hurt by however long Shiro kept it from him.

“Your mother's name is Krolia. She loves you, more than anything else in the universe. She never wanted to leave you, but she thought it was the best way to protect you.”

In the minute that followed the only sound was a faint pop as one of the coals in the fire fell apart, revealing two burning halves. Shiro traced the path of sparks up to the sky and waited.

Shiro had expected Keith's first question would be, _How do you know?_ Instead it was, “She's alive?”

“Yes. As far as I know. A year ago, she was.”

“You met her?” Keith's voice cracked.

“Not... yes and no. It's complicated, Keith. I'm sorry.”

“How can it be complicated? Just tell me what happened. Is she – why did she – what was she protecting me from?” When Shiro didn't answer right away, he pressed, “Shiro?”

“Sorry. I just – I'm trying to figure out how to explain.” Shiro sat up, hunching toward the nearly-dead fire and pulling the sleeping bag with him to cover his shoulders. It was all too large and immediate in his mind, the scale thrown entirely out of whack by his own limited perspective. He needed to take a mental step back. “You got taught about the Drake equation, yeah?”

“Yeah,” said Keith. Willing to humour Shiro as always, even over something so dear to himself. Shiro didn't deserve him in the slightest. “The... potential for there to be alien species in the universe, ones that might be sending out signals. The Garrison has satellites dedicated to listening for them even though nobody really knows what the equation's solution is, right? We don't know enough about how likely life is on planets, stuff like that.”

“But it's greater than zero,” Shiro said softly. “So in an infinite universe, it happens. It happens a _lot_.”

“Are you saying... my mom was taken by aliens?”

“Not exactly.”

“Then what?”

“Most of the universe – or an extremely large piece of it, anyway – is ruled by an alien species known as the Galra. The empire is expansionist, militaristic. Their motto is _vrepit sa_ – 'victory or death'. They've enslaved countless worlds and destroyed countless more. The emperor is ten thousand years old and his right hand, the witch, she's – ” His throat closed up and he had to clear it before he could finish, weakly, “She's terrifying.

“But not all the Galra believe in the empire. Some are just as enslaved as their servitor species. Others oppose it. One group is called the Blades of Marmora. Your mother is one of their agents.”

“My mom is... an alien? An alien freedom fighter?”

“Yes. I'm not quite sure how she wound up on Earth, but I know she wanted to stay. She left Earth so that she could fight to protect it and keep attention away from it. She wanted to keep you safe. She loved your father and she loves you.”

Shiro couldn't see Keith's face. His outline was motionless.

“Keith...”

His voice was strangled. “Don't.”

Shiro crawled out of his own sleeping bag, then picked it up and crossed around the fire, nearly tripping when he reached Keith's foam roll. The dying embers were just enough to identify the shape of Keith's body. Shiro sat down by Keith's head and wrapped the sleeping bag around his shoulders. After a moment, he heard Keith shift, and felt the top of Keith's head press against his thigh.

They stayed that way until the coals of the fire were cold and grey, and the eastern sky had turned to gold.

  


Keith vanished for the day, taking his water-bottle and a compass and disappearing into the desert. Shiro stuck around, unable to do much hiking among the myriad canyons with his ribs in the shape they were. It was better that he stayed, anyway. Keith had always needed his space just as much as he'd needed a friend. He read one of the cheap paperbacks that Keith had brought along with him fro the Garrison's library, then stretched out in the shade and let his mind wander far from the reach of the sun.

The Blue Lion was more obvious now that Shiro knew what to expect – too obvious, really. Haggar would see. Shiro wound himself around through space, trying to figure out where exactly Blue _was_ , but that was impossible; like trying to feel a coin with the back of his hand to tell if it was heads or tails. Somewhere near, he could almost feel as he slipped back into his physical body. But the where eluded him, and he couldn't remember the path he'd taken in another lifetime.

“You're napping a lot,” Keith said, when Shiro got up around dusk. He hadn't seen Keith returning, certainly hadn't sensed him like he had Blue. Another problem of scale.

“It's called meditation.”

Keith grunted. “You lie down with your eyes closed and don't move for long periods of time.”

“If I was napping that often, I'd be better rested,” Shiro said, laughing a bit, but it wasn't true. His body didn't care what his brain did while it was motionless, and his mind found more rest free of its confines than not. It was details that were exhausting.

Keith just grunted again. He had his knife in his lap, unsheathed, and a whetstone in one hand, but he wasn't using it, didn't even have any water. Instead he was just turning the blade over, studying it carefully.

“I don't think it can get dull,” Shiro offered.

“It never has. But... my dad, he taught me how to sharpen a knife, using it.” He looked up at Shiro. “You know this was my mom's.”

“Yeah. The symbol on the hilt... it's the Blades of Marmora. If you show it to them – well, they're kind of prickly, but you can convince them to help you to find her.”

“I'm not much good at convincing people.”

“You can do it. It's up to you to decide if you want to. But, Keith, this is important – you need to make sure nobody at the Garrison gets their hands on that knife. Or on you. I know you've had the regular physicals for cadets, but – you've never been sick in your life, they've never looked closer. It's important that they don't.”

“Because I'm not human.”

“You're human. You're also Galra.”

“What do Galra even look like? Shouldn't I be – ” Keith floundered, and made a one-handed wavy arm motion, like he was trying to indicate either a squid or a really drunk bird.

Shiro was startled into a burst of laughter. “They're not, uh,” and he mimicked the motion back at Keith. “Galra mix pretty well with other species, it's not weird you mostly take after your dad. They're not that different, anyway, on the basic level – oxygen breathers, two arms, two legs, same kind of build. Um. They've got fur, it's usually purple. They're bigger – your mom's on the short side and she's got a couple inches on me. Her hair looks a lot like yours. Some of her face – your bone structure.”

Those features softened now, as Keith looked back down at the knife in his lap. “Oh.”

Shiro waited.

“Is this why... you said you'd been acting weird. Not that – I know you had a lot going on this year.”

“No. Keith, who you are is who _you_ are. Galra are people just as much as human beings are.”

“But you think the Garrison won't see it like that.”

“They know the Galra are out there. The Kerberos mission was taken by one of the empire's ships. That's why all the secret projects. I don't know how much the Garrison really knows – they have to be picking up more signals, if they were asking me about Voltron.”

“Voltron? You mean... that's real?”

“Yeah. It's a weapon. The most powerful weapon in the universe.”

“The Garrison'd want that.”

“I don't think the Garrison knows what it is, exactly. But the Galra definitely do, and they _really_ want it. Zarkon, their emperor, he's been obsessed with finding it for as long as he's been on the throne. If I'm remembering things right, they already have one Lion – one piece of it – but they don't know where the other four are.”

“Lion?”

“Yeah. They're... ships, I guess, is the easiest way to describe them. But they're also kind of alive. Not in the way humans or Galra are. They're... something else entirely.”

“This energy.” Keith jerked his head, indicating the desert around them. “I went looking for it, today. I could feel it calling, but I couldn't find it. One of these lions is here, isn't it?”

“Yes. It's the reason your mother came to Earth.”

“And the Galra came after her. They're still coming.”

“Yeah. They don't know it's here. But they will, and they'll raze Earth to get it. They've destroyed other planets for less.”

“Then we have to get to the lion first, and figure out how to use it, or convince it to fight for us. You said Voltron is the most powerful weapon in the universe, right? What about just a part of it? Could that hold off the empire?”

“No, though it'd be a good start. It could certainly destroy one of their cruisers. But... you know how I said the Lions were alive? They're picky about their pilots. And they do need pilots, it helps them...” Shiro squinted into the distance, tried to figure out how to explain what the Black Lion had conveyed to him without words, and gave up. “They need pilots. The Galra have the Red Lion, and they can't do anything with her because she won't even let them in.”

“I'm pretty sure any ship in the universe would let you pilot her, Shiro.”

The words touched some portion of the grief in Shiro's soul and made it lighter. Oh, Keith. Shiro smiled and shook his head. “It's not a matter of skill. It's about personality, and... the kind of energy you have. The Lions, they're ancient, and they don't think in the same way we do. It's not... it's not a judgement on being good or evil or a decent pilot. It's just compatibility. I'm not compatible.”

Keith frowned. “Well, even if you can't,” and the doubt in his voice seemed to imply that he thought there was something wrong about the Lions' judgement, or maybe Shiro's own, “I can try. Or – I know the Garrison's been up to some hinky things, but there's gotta be some people we can trust, there.”

“There are. Honestly, the way it worked out... I have to wonder if there wasn't someone else moving pieces around. There's four cadets at the Garrison right now who could each pilot a different Lion. You can fly Red. Hunk can fly Yellow.”

“Hunk's not even a pilot!”

“I told you, that doesn't matter.”

“But he throws up in half the simulations!”

“He's a lot better when he's the one driving, trust me.”

“Ugh, fine. Who're the others?”

“Lance and Pidge. They're joining the fighter-class in the new term. Blue and green, respectively.”

“Lance... is he that guy who kept trying to get in my face last year?”

“Heh, you noticed. Yeah, he is – wants to be rivals with you. He is a good pilot, though. I want you to tutor him.”

“What?” Keith yelped, then stared at him. “Why? Shiro, you know I'm awful at trying to explain stuff.”

“Not as bad as you think you are,” Shiro said fondly. “A lot of that's just practice. You've improved this year already, Keith, but I know you can do even better. Working with Lance will help you with that. And Lance has things that he needs to learn from you, too.”

“Why? Is the Red Lion like... a teacher, or something?”

“Not the Red Lion. She'll adore you the way you are – she's about, mm, instinct, fast reaction, quick decisions. Loyalty. Very temperamental.”

“Oh, thanks.”

“The Black Lion, on the other hand, needs more control. A leader. The Red Lion is her right hand – quick, snappy action, backing her up or calling her on a mistake without delay. The Black Lion needs someone who can take an instant to think things through and figure out the larger picture, then lead everybody else through the fight.”

Keith shook his head. “Shiro... you've just described yourself.”

That tender spot in his heart twinged with pain. “I wish I could pilot the Black Lion, Keith. I wish I could. I can't. You can, if you work at it.”

“But I'm not... like that.”

“You're more than you think you are, Keith. I know you are. All you need to do is learn when to pause. Please.”

Keith's expression crumbled, his gaze dropping to the knife in his lap. God, this again was why Shiro had wanted proof. It was so unfair to Keith, to have to take this all on faith. He couldn't believe how much Keith had already accepted simply without questioning. His faith in Shiro was too strong. Shiro could never let himself break that trust, and yet, he knew how easy it would be to fail, to fall, to have no choice in the matter at all.

“You really think you can't fly the Black Lion?”

“Yes.”

“Then... I'll try.”

“Thank you.”

“But – argh. Why _Lance?_ ”

“He is a good pilot, Keith. He can be better. He's hot-headed in his own way, has that same tendency toward quick reactions, but he second-guesses himself too much and sometimes that means he hesitates and sometimes it means tries something stupid when he should be supporting a teammate. When he doesn't have time to over-think things, though, he always puts other people ahead of himself. He's perfect for Blue. He genuinely likes _people._ He's always reaching out, always trying to make new friends – new connections. The Blue Lion is about connecting and holding together.”

“But you want him to fly Red.”

“I know he can do it. I also know someone else who can fly Blue. I'm not sure she could fly Red. She can't fly Black. I'd thought she'd be able to, but... she tried, once, and it wasn't... it didn't work.”

A memory surfaced, forgotten until now: Allura, sitting inside Black and weeping, begging to be allowed to live up to her father's legacy. He'd wanted to weep with her, and the force of the returning memory made him want to weep again now. At the time he'd still been so tightly wound up in Black, his soul so small and fragile, non-existence so new, that he couldn't even look away.

This memory was also the Black Lion's memory. From her viewpoint he could feel the way that the edges of Allura's quintessence hadn't been able to click into the spaces of Black's soul. It wasn't any fault of Allura's, no more than it'd been a fault of Lance's or Pidge's or Hunk's. Part of the bond was personality, it was true. But part of it was just the shape and size of one's soul, and whether it fit to the gaps in the Lion's own. And that was far rarer: the Lions could not bend, much, too vast themselves.

Allura's quintessence hummed like a star, powerful and dense enough to heal a planet, and couldn't bend, much, either. Black and she didn't fit. Blue, so focused on connections and reaching out, could bend only a little more, but Blue's quintessence made a better shape for her in the first place. It was like being short instead of tall, having two arms or having four – it had nothing to do with worthiness or fairness. It was just the way it was.

“Who is she?”

“Her name's Allura. She's with the Black Lion, right now, but she's in cryostasis.”

“Is she an alien, too?”

“Out there, we're the aliens.”

“Whatever. Is she Galra?”

“No. Altean. The empire destroyed her home planet a long time ago.”

“...They have a lot to answer for.”

“Yeah,” said Shiro, and felt more memories sweep over him, a deadening, rage-inducing tide. “Yeah, they do. And it's been a long time coming.”

  


The work on the house stalled after that. Keith took off into the desert more days than not. Shiro told him about the radiation, that Hunk could build a way to detect it, but Keith shrugged and said he liked looking. It seemed to let him sort out his head, at any rate. He hadn't asked for more, and Shiro knew that his explanation had been laughably incomplete so far, but even what Shiro had already told him had to be a lot.

By the end of the second week Shiro had finished the course of bone-grow meds that Bensham had prescribed him, and his ribs had graduated from 'broken' to 'lightly cracked'. He started helping out more with the house, but he felt odd working on it when Keith wasn't there – it was Keith's place to go through. He tried going out with Keith to look for the Blue Lion once, and regretted it. The rock features repeated themselves in a dizzying maze, and between that and the Lion's call it felt like Blue was around every corner. It sent his head back to that one day on Earth he'd had, and that day... his head hadn't been in a good place, that day. All his impressions had been too bright, too open, too exposed, _hold it together, Shirogane, they're coming._ The route to the Blue Lion was a haze in his head; the walk he remembered vividly, but it was mostly about trying not to flip out at the open sky overhead or edge away every time one of the others came too close.

Better to leave it to Keith, if Keith didn't mind going by himself.

Early mornings were for katas, moving meditations. In the evenings, they sparred.

Keith was fast and vicious, scrappy as hell. Shiro could still reliably beat him, but it was easy to see what a force he would be in a few years, what a force he always was. Paladin training had honed Keith's skills and getting stuck in a time distortion field had given him the time to polish them, not to mention an extra growth spurt and slightly longer reach that he could put to good use. He didn't have that, yet, but he would get there.

They made mock-swords and knives out of spindly bits of the siding they were replacing on the house, and Keith had more even footing with those than he did in hand-to-hand: Shiro had been practising more than Keith had in the past year, had been constantly testing himself against the other students of the advanced class, but he hadn't picked up weapons again. Hadn't wanted to, hadn't cared to – but Keith needed the practice, wanted it like the desert wanted rain.

Every time, he felt the echoes of their fight, months and years into the future and past. Keith noticed, but Shiro waved him off. He couldn't talk about that, yet. Couldn't talk about the ways he'd been lost, how Keith had found him and saved him and lost him again.

 _I'm sorry,_ he thought, again and again as he lay in the dark, but it went nowhere. He could project his mind across the universe, but he couldn't send his apologies any further than that. _I didn't mean to leave you again._

  


“How long do you think we have?” Keith asked, on their last night in the desert. “Until the Galra figure it out.”

He'd spent most of the day out looking again. Shiro had spent the time on his own search, but the Holts proved to be far more elusive than the Blue Lion.

“A couple months.”

“That's close,” Keith said quietly.

“Yeah.”

“We'll be ready,” said Keith, and when Shiro looked up, he could see the flames of their campfire reflected in Keith's eyes: steady and determined.


	8. Chapter 8

The next day they packed up and were ready to go an hour after dawn. Keith drove, again, but this time he didn't have to worry about Shiro's ribs, and took them on a twisting, roundabout route that sent the hover-car screaming through canyons, often banking sideways just to fit through a gap or get around a sharp curve. Shiro whooped and hung on for dear life, until finally he demanded Keith pull over so that he could have his turn, and all in all by the time they arrived at the Garrison's gates, it was past noon and the charge on the car's engine was sitting at just above 2%. It got Shiro an eyeroll when he signed it back it, but there were no dings or scratches that the duty officer could make out, so he was clear.

“You and your rides, Shirogane,” the guy said sourly, and Shiro gave him a grin and a cheeky salute.

His first stop was his quarters, for his first hot shower in weeks. His second was medical, so he could get signed off before term started. He felt himself tensing up as he walked through the main campus. The looks weren't new, but now he had to wonder how many of the faces he didn't recognize were involved in some secret project or other – how many might be looking at him not as a crazy wash-out, but as a potential source of information.

Bensham came herself to do his check-over, and the moment he saw her face he knew something was wrong. She looked furious.

“Ma'am?”

“Let me check you over first, then I'll fill you in on the gossip,” she said shortly.

His ribs were fine, healed well. He had a couple bruises where Keith had caught him in practice, but Bensham was used to treating military and didn't raise an eyebrow when he explained. She dinged him for a low iron count and told him to eat more vegetables.

Then she sat down and said, “You also need a new psychiatrist.”

 _Do I have to?_ would have sounded whiny, so instead Shiro said, trying to make his voice as neutral as possible, “I'd really hoped that wouldn't be necessary anymore.”

“You had a major psychiatric crisis, Shiro. You were in here for months. Nguyen – ”

“Definitely not her.”

“I was going to say, she's facing charges of malpractice, and she wouldn't be welcome in this medical facility anymore even if she wasn't. But that doesn't mean you wouldn't still benefit from seeing someone regularly. Your recovery has been remarkable – nothing short of miraculous, honestly – but I'd feel a lot better if you were getting regular care. And, outside of the good it could do for you, and the benefits of proactive mental health, I think it would also help provide you with a certain buffer.”

“What do you mean?”

Her face grew pinched and angry again. “Iverson's been re-instated.”

Shiro blinked. Then he wondered why he felt so surprised: the Garrison had let him down a long time ago. He thought he'd lost his trust in it by now, but apparently not all of it.

“Admiral Kabirii will be staying on as an observer for a while yet. I don't have high hopes there,” Bensham said sourly. “She wasn't around even when she was directly in charge. I don't like it. Having a medical professional who can monitor your state of mind and go to bat for you against anyone who wants to mess with it would give you a degree of protection from that quarter. Not everybody's involved in his 'secret projects', and most have stronger ethics than Nguyen demonstrated. Just... try it out. If you don't like them we'll find someone else.”

Shiro rubbed a hand over his face. “Fine. I'll give it a try.”

“All I ask is that you take care of yourself, Shiro.”

  


He reported in remotely, delayed going to the mess until well after standard dinner hours, and spent the night up on the roof. His hope that Pidge would be there was foiled, but in the morning he rose with his centre of balance restored. Iverson would or would not be an obstacle. Shiro would deal with it.

It was good that he'd regained his equilibrium, because the first day back was as trying as it always was. Shiro hounded cadets through morning CQC classes, sending three off to medical from poorly-pulled blows and assigning remedial lessons to half a dozen more. “Come on, cadets!” he barked. “I don't care if you're hungover or sleep-deprived, while you're here, you _focus!_ ”

Lance and Hunk had both wound up in his class, a schedule rearrangement for Hunk and a promotion for Lance. Shiro's ears picked up Lance's comment as he passed by: “Geez, he's a lot meaner than he is in sims...”

“That's not focusing, cadet!”

He saw both of them again in the simulator that afternoon. Lance's glee at the promotion to fighter-class had clearly brightened his spirits – he was near enough to bouncing off the walls, eager to volunteer to go first. Shiro let him, which he realized was a mistake as soon as the simulation began: as part of the usual team shuffle for the new term, he'd assigned Hunk to Lance's crew.

Lance crashed, badly. Hunk threw up in the engine box. Their comms tech, a usually steady young woman who'd been scoring just above class average all last term, totally lost it at Lance's antics, climbed out of her seat to go give him a piece of her mind, and nearly got a concussion when Lance tried and failed to fit the ship sideways through a narrow gap.

Shiro managed not to face-palm. He did have to take a moment to keep his expression neutral, though. Then he turned to Keith's group, and told their new engineer to go grab a sanitization kit. She looked momentarily rebellious, but saluted.

“Don't worry, cadet,” he told her dryly. “You're not the one who'll be employing it.”

He made Lance do that.

“That was terrible,” he told them all bluntly, when they'd finished and climbed out, chastened. “I'm disappointed. You are capable of doing better and you chose not to. Cadet Malik, report to Medical and get them to check you over. Garret, go with her.” He shook his head. “Next group.”

Keith's group was next, unhappy but resigned to flying in the lingering odour of vomit. He'd put Pidge as Keith's comm specialist, an easy choice to justify when Keith was the top student and Pidge's most recent promotion had come with concerns that it might be too far, too fast. That, too, might have been a mistake: free of worrying about Hunk, Keith slipped back to his old style of fly-like-blazes, damn-the-passengers in a heartbeat. Shiro narrowed his eyes and considered kicking the difficulty up, then reconsidered and started dialling it down a notch every time Keith tried to push the envelope.

When their simulation was done, Keith stalked out looking offended.

“You're trying to be too fancy,” Shiro told him bluntly in the debriefing. “I know how well you can fly, cadet. But you're part of a crew now. Flying isn't your only responsibility. Your comms tech could have used your assistance several times, and you completely failed to notice.”

He turned to Pidge. “The same goes for you – both ways. Talk to your team. Tell them what's going on. If you can't reach a component, tell your pilot and get assistance.

“And I swear, the next person who unbuckles their seat belt during the simulation is going to be doing dawn PT for a month. They are there for a reason and you will treat them with the respect that is due a critical piece of safety equipment. In real life you wouldn't be risking injuring just yourself, you'd also be risking injury or death to your teammates when you become an unrestrained object moving at high velocity in a pressure vessel.

“Next group!”

  


The groups after that were considerably more subdued, but they showed all the usual strains of new teams working together, and by the end of the afternoon Shiro had a low-grade headache behind his eyes. _Patience,_ he reminded himself. They'd get there. Hopefully.

He kept back Lance, Keith, and Pidge at the end of the day, reaching into his pocket for the trio of electronic chits. The first two went to Lance and Keith.

“These are passes to the sims, for the 1900-2100 slot Monday, Wednesday, and Thursdays. McClain, Kogane's agreed to tutor you.”

“What?” Lance's face was a picture of indignation. “Why do I need him to tutor me? He's not that great!”

Keith was giving Shiro a deeply sceptical look, one that read, _Really, him?_

“Him, because you both have a lot to learn from each other,” Shiro said, eyeing Lance until he backed off, deflating. “I expect you both to show up ready and willing to do that learning. Am I understood?”

“Yes, sir,” they both chorused, resigned.

“Good.” He jerked his head toward the door, and they shuffled off, eyeing one another. He turned back to Pidge, who was staring up at him with a mullish expression.

“I understand you've been continually caught outside bounds after curfew. I also hear that you're having difficulty getting lab time for your independent astrometrics study.” Her eyes widened, and he held up the third pass. “This will give you permission to be outside your dorm in limited areas until midnight. If you go outside those areas, or stay out past midnight, it'll be taken away. Don't abuse this, and don't go around showing it off – I won't be able to get you another one. Understand?”

She nodded, eyes wide and confused, and he handed it over.

“Thank you,” she said, tacking on a belated, “sir. I... appreciate it.”

The care with which she was picking her words told him that what she really would have appreciated was a chance to thoroughly interrogate him. Well, she'd get that soon enough.

Months in and he still hadn't found the Holts, hadn't figured out how to look on a small enough level to do so. Maybe, like the Black Lion, he just _couldn't_. So long as there was any uncertainty, he wouldn't give up – but that would be small comfort to Pidge.

He put off going to the roof, instead dropping in on Keith and Lance's first tutoring session. It didn't go well. They fought their way through the entire thing, Keith giving choppy answers and rarely asking questions, Lance bristling at every suggestion Keith _did_ make and doing the exact opposite out of contrariness. Shiro met them at the door of the sim, surprising them both – apparently they hadn't noticed him enter the observation room.

“Some things in life are a competition. This isn't. By treating it like one, you're both holding yourselves back,” he told them, and watched as their outward anger curdled and turned inward. Argh. That wasn't helpful, either. Shiro sighed. “Call it a night and go wind down. Come back with clearer heads on Wednesday and try it again, alright?”

Keith lingered after Lance had glumly saluted and left. “I was trying,” he said, as soon as Lance was out of earshot.

“I know. But he was still riling you up, right?” Shiro turned and set a path for the athletics areas – the private gyms would be starting to clear out by now.

“I don't get how he's supposed to be a people person,” Keith said bluntly. “He keeps saying shit.”

Shiro laughed. “Partly it's because it's you. He think of you as his rival – he's embarrassed that he's getting help from you, when what he wants is to be better than you. Partly it's because he's frustrated with himself. That's on him to deal with and get through.”

“Then what am I supposed to do?”

“You remember last term – you kept getting pissed at people talking about me.”

“Yeah... you said you didn't care.”

“It's not just not caring. It's learning control – not just control over your actions, but control over your emotions and reactions. Life is full of situations that suck. Keeping control of yourself is the first step to getting out of those situations.”

“So if I learn control, you won't make me tutor him anymore?”

“Nice try,” said Shiro, swiping his card and letting them both into the lockers. They grabbed their stuff and changed into practice clothes in silence, while Keith chewed over his words.

 _Hypocrit_ , a part of Shiro's brain pointed out snidely. _You don't have control at all._ But he did have enough to shove the voice aside, for now.

They found an empty gym and warmed up in silence, then by unspoken agreement chose weapons. The practice blades that the Garrison had were a lot better balanced than old siding. Shiro hadn't touched them in – years, subjectively. He flipped his over and over in his hand, comparing it to memories that existed more in his muscles than his mind – muscles that he didn't have anymore, but the memories laid like ghosts over them nonetheless.

Their desert spars had attuned them to each other: they didn't have to talk. They just began, moving at the same time into the complicated dance of strike, parry, riposte. The feel of a balanced sword in his hand and Keith's opposing him left Shiro's reflexes a hair slower, and Keith scored a number of touches, until he hissed and frustration and asked, “Shiro, what's wrong?”

“It's not, it's – ”

The door to the gym clicked open and Shiro whirled, sword up and mind blank of everything except: two opponents, one armed one unknown, kill them both. _There is nothing else left._

“Sorry to interrupt,” said Tsume, and then her eyes widened slightly and she leaned back in the doorway. “Woah, easy.”

Shiro shook his head and took a breath. “No, it's – we should probably be done, here.” He stepped to the side – not quite able to turn his back on her – and put the sword back in the rack.

“Hmm, yeah.” When he looked at her straight-on again, she switched her gaze to Keith. “You should join the advanced classes, cadet. Not just for laps, this time.”

“You think so?” Keith sounded pleased, but he was giving Shiro a worried look.

“I was watching just now. You're good. You've got the potential to become even better. I'm surprised you haven't dragged him in already, Shiro.”

He hadn't really been thinking about it. Keith had been not-Keith, and there'd been... everything else. But, hell, Keith was a year older than most cadets in his year, and if he didn't have his final growth he did have most of it, and a hell of a lot of skill to back it up. Hadn't Shiro thought before that he just needed more time and polish? “You're right,” he admitted. “I should have already.”

“What d'you say, cadet? It's optional. Those early hours aren't for everybody.”

“I'll do it.”

“Good.” She nodded briskly and turned, throwing back over her shoulder, “Cadet curfew's in ten. Don't stay out too late either, Shiro. If a cadet's able to get that many hits on you, you need more sleep.”

Well-intentioned advice. But the stars called to him, and Pidge deserved answers. He parted from Keith, getting one last, worried look, and went to see if she was waiting.

For a moment when Shiro stepped out onto the rooftop he thought she wasn't. The air was clear and dry, and the sky overhead in full brilliant bloom. He tipped his face upward in acknowledgement, then regretfully looked away, checking the rest of his surroundings. He found her on the far side away from the stairwell, tucked behind the bulk of the intake vents so that she wouldn't be immediately visible.

As he approached he let his boots scuff against the concrete, not wanting to surprise her, but she didn't move from her hunched position in front of her laptop. After a second he noticed she was wearing headphones. Awkwardly, he cleared his throat, but she didn't hear that, either.

Well, then. He leaned down and tapped on her shoulder.

“Gyahh!” Pidge leapt into the air, clutching her laptop – conveniently hiding the screen, Shiro noticed. “Who the – I mean, uh, sir!” Her surprise turned defiant as she knocked her headphones back. “I have permission to be up here, it was included in that pass!”

“I know. I wanted to talk to you.”

She set her laptop down, picking up her notebook and hastily shutting it. “About the Kerberos mission?”

“Yeah.”

Eager, she leaned forward. “You were the original pilot. Do you know what happened to it?”

“Not as much as I should,” Shiro admitted. Her determined gaze felt like a reproach. He knew what _would_ have happened to it... if he hadn't gotten dumped back in time, assumed all the wrong things, and tried to punch out an airlock. He didn't know if Choi had been able to keep Matt safe. He didn't know if Choi had been able to keep _herself_ safe. The Galra wouldn't have shot them on the spot, but there were many fates worse than death available to prisoners of the empire, and Shiro hadn't been there to protect them.

Unable to face her, Shiro turned and walked to the edge of the roof, breathing in the sky. Space was large and the stars were small, their inhabitants smaller yet. He felt that vastness lingering at the edge of his brain and let it centre him.

“So what do you know?” asked Pidge, impatient.

“There was no pilot error. Betsy Choi, your father, and your brother were taken by the Galra Empire. By aliens. The empire is very old and very powerful. If Earth weren't in such a backwater region of space, we'd probably have been attacked before now. They enslave and destroy other species as a matter of course. Your father was probably taken to a work camp. I... don't know about your brother or Choi. I'm sorry.”

“What? Wait, wait wait wait – how do you know this? Is there footage? How did you know they're my family?”

“I recognized you. Footage – I don't know. As far as the Garrison is concerned, I don't know any of this.”

“What happened? Why were you yanked from the mission? Matt just said you had some kind of health problem. I know what your records say.”

“That I had a psychotic episode and spent five months in a coma?” Shiro stared out at the stars and let himself fall a little farther.

“Yes. When did you find out about the aliens – the Galra?”

 _I should have been there..._ his body was unmarred in this timeline, but instead he'd sent Matt and Choi to die in his place, beneath the lights of the arena...

Something touched his arm. Shiro spun, grabbing his attacker's limb and twisting against the joint, eliciting a cry of pain – they were small, but size was no sure indicator of harmlessness. He'd learned that the hard way through pain and tears and blood sheeting down his face. He carried the motion through and pinned them against the ground, one knee pressing against their spine and his arms pinning their own. Muffled noises of pain and protest reached his ears. Too late. One of them was going to die here; he'd tried sparing some of his opponents in the beginning and only earned them far more horrible deaths. He raised his hand, and it wasn't – it wasn't his hand, it was –

Something was off, something was wrong. Shiro blinked, tried to make himself take in his surroundings. Lights – there were lights below, but they were... below. Different. Overhead were stars. Open sky.

He let go of Pidge and stumbled back, clamping a hand over his mouth. Oh, god.

She pulled herself up and flipped around, into the basic defensive stance that all cadets were taught in intro CQC, hands up, feet shoulder-width apart, balanced. Her eyes were wide.

“Sorry,” Shiro managed. His voice was shaking. “Pidge, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to – to react like that.” God. That had been bad. None of his other flashbacks – he'd never had one like that around somebody who couldn't defend themselves. God.

“Why – what happened? You weren't responding to anything I said...”

“It's – I can't – ” He crossed his arms across his chest, hunching inward, but that felt – like too weak a posture; he wouldn't be able to respond to an attack as quickly. Everything he'd considered saying was jumbled up. “Just – give me a minute.”

“Okay,” she said, clearly uncomfortable.

He breathed. The stars beckoned and he shoved them away. _Focus. Patience yields focus._

“I don't have proof,” he said, and his voice was steadier. “Not yet – I can get it, with your help. So, this is going to sound... pretty insane.”

“People think believing in aliens is insane,” Pidge said flatly. “But I've been picking up their signals ever since I got here.”

“Right. I'm from... a year or two in the future. I think less than three. In my timeline, I'd piloted the Kerberos mission – I was captured along with Matt and your father. When I went back in time, I didn't know what had happened. I thought I'd been captured again. I thought – all this – I thought it was just a trick.”

“Hence everybody thinking you'd gone crazy,” said Pidge, nodding. She still looked suspicious, but – she sounded like she was willing to believe. Could he be so lucky?

“That does sound pretty out there,” she went on. But she sounded almost reluctant about it – well, of course she did. She'd been handed her first real clue in months as to what had happened to her family, and the giver might be nuts or making it all up. “You said I could help you prove it. How?”

Shiro slumped with relief. “The signals you're picking up – the Galra. At some point, they're going to start repeating one in particular. It's... some kind of radiation signature, but I can't remember the name. We can track it – you can, I mean, you and Hunk built a machine that would track it, and that's how we found the Blue Lion – kind of an alien ship. From there... we found the other lions, formed Voltron... it's a long story.” He feels exhausted just thinking about it. _I was dead and brainwashed for most of it. Yes, at the same time._

“Did I find my family? In your timeline?”

“Yes,” said Shiro. “Your father was in the work camps for a while, but when Voltron... the empire tried to use him as a bargaining chip. You saved him!” he added hastily, seeing the anguish in her eyes. “He was fine, he went back to Earth to try and warn people about the Galra. Matt stayed to fight – rebels had freed him, and he'd been working with them for quite a while.”

“Then they could be out there already – wait! You said you didn't know where Matt was.”

“I don't know how it worked out in this timeline. I... got him him sent to the work camps, in my original timeline.”

“You got him _sent there?_ ”

“To save his life. The other option wasn't... we didn't have high odds. I don't know if – there's a chance he could still be alive in this timeline, even if he wound up there. He's stronger than I realized then.”

“What was it? What was the other option?”

“The Galra... they have these arenas. Like, Roman gladiators. We were captured, new prisoners – warm-up for the current champion. Myzax was – ” Shiro's throat closed up, and it gave him a moment to remember who he was talking to. “He was tough.”

“You fought him. And you survived.”

“Yeah.” _I killed him._

“Then Matt could, too,” said Pidge, with the determination of the desperate. “I'll find him.”

If Matt survived, he would hate Shiro, for putting him through it all. Shiro wouldn't choose death over living through that year, but he could remember, vaguely, that that hadn't always been true. If the druids took an interest in Matt... if _Haggar_ did... Shiro clutched convulsively at his right arm, remembering.

He might be glad he'd survived that year, but he'd choose death before he'd let himself be captured a third time.

Pidge, flipping her laptop open again, didn't seem to notice. “I'll find him. You said that this energy signature is in the Galra broadcasts – I can set up monitoring equipment up here to check every night. Building something to detect it will be easy...”

“Get Hunk to help you. Hunk Garret, he's in your sims class.”

“I can get this rigged up on my own.”

“Voltron needs five pilots. Hunk is one of them.”

She looked up. “What is Voltron? They've said that once or twice. I can't understand their language, but it's always emphasized.”

“You can't under- oh. You haven't been through a translator field yet.”

“They have translator fields?”

“Yeah, everywhere. Voltron is a weapon, a defender. It's made up of the five lions. The lions are... they're not just ships. They're picky about their pilots. Last time, there were five of us, and we were really lucky that we matched up. I didn't realize how lucky at the time. I think the Blue Lion must have been putting out some kind of call, or field, because the odds of it happening were just astronomically low.” He hadn't realized how low until he'd been able to see the shapes of souls. “To break your father out of the work camp, quickly, the fastest way would be with Voltron – it's the most powerful weapon in the universe. That means you need the other pilots.”

She didn't like that, he could tell.

“The universe needs Voltron, Pidge. It's been ten thousand years since the Galra took over. Earth won't be safe until they're stopped, and you're needed to do that.”

“I just want to find my family.”

“Voltron will help you do both. It's no weakness to accept help, or give it, along the way. It just means you both accomplish your goals faster.”

“...I guess.”

“I know this all sounds crazy. But if you can find that signal, find the lions, they'll be able to take you where you need to go. Just... be careful. Don't let the Garrison find out.”

“You're Garrison,” she pointed out.

“Not really.” He shrugged. “In my original timeline they pinned the 'pilot error' on me.”

“Oh.”

“The Garrison doesn't know what Voltron is – yet – but they know the Galra are looking for it, and so they've started looking, too. If they get their hands on the lion on Earth, that'd be... bad.”

“I thought you said these lions were picky.”

“They are. I don't think anyone else at the Garrison would be able to pilot them, though... they might get lucky, then try to control the pilot. But they definitely wouldn't be able to get more than one, and the Blue Lion can take out a cruiser, but it can't take out a fleet. If the Garrison tries to fight the Galra with the Blue Lion, Earth will lose. If they lock up the Blue Lion and prevent us from getting to it, the Galra will still be able to track it down, and Earth will lose. They will either enslave us or destroy the planet.”

“...Oh. Wait. The Galra can track the Blue Lion? Why haven't they already done that?”

“It'll be a couple months, if things go like they did last time, but... yeah. She's been asleep for ten thousand years. She only woke up recently.”

“Why?”

He was about to say he didn't know. It might have been the capture of the Red Lion, or the way that the Galra were so close to finding the Yellow. It might have been something that the witch had done. But abruptly he realized it wasn't any of those things. The energy he felt from Blue wasn't angry or unnatural: it was _anticipatory_ , full of the same vivacity that he found in every star in the universe. It was part of something vaster, just like the Blue Lion herself was.

“Change is coming. The Lions can feel it. Blue, especially.”

“What? What does that mean?”

“We're all made of stardust. Everything is connected.”

“Oh come on, that's psuedo-scientific bullshit.”

He laughed. “Yeah, I thought the same, once.” He put a hand on one of the metal vent intakes. The silent song of the stars was ringing so loudly in his ears, he thought he might drift away unless he clung on to something. He didn't want to collapse in front of her. “I've gotta go. Don't get caught out after curfew. It won't help you find that signal.”

“Oh, I'll find it, alright,” she muttered, typing furiously at her laptop. Shiro left, making his way to the stairwell door, and heard her call a belated, “Wait – !”

He should stay, he should stay. But his nerves were shot and his mind was already half gone.


	9. Chapter 9

The next couple days didn't give him much time to think. Iverson demanded more detailed reports on how the fighter-class sims groups were doing – thankfully, by email. The mysterious Admiral Kabirii was copied on everything, but never wrote anything. Shiro spent a long time composing a very carefully worded email to Commander Davis asking for an update on the investigation results, and then more time trying to distract himself from waiting for a response that never arrived. He met with his new psychologist, and left the session upset and unsettled, uncertain if he wanted to keep seeing her. After the way he'd reacted to Pidge, he knew he _should_ be seeing a psychologist – but if he tried talking to her about what was actually wrong, she'd probably have him hospitalized again.

In morning practice, he kicked Keith's ass with a quarterstaff, but still couldn't fight against him properly with a sword.

More often, observers began to drop by the sims classes to watch the results of the cadets' runs. It was unusual, this early in the year: toward the end of the semester, sure, when professors were looking for prospective proteges and project teams were looking to recruit the next batch of fourth-year students in need of practicum hours. There were a lot of faces that he didn't recognize among the observers. There were a lot of observers, period. It made Shiro feel like he was under a microscope, and the cadets sweated more, even though he could see from the times and scores that they were beating the pants off of last year's class. His approach in the previous semester, coaching them through the scenarios instead of only afterwards, was paying off. He received a fair amount of compliments for it, along with more work in the form of simulation review and design, until he was so constantly busy that he could almost forget about the crawling sensation of being observed.

The woman with the missing rank pins was never there when he looked.

He barely had time to check on the progress of Keith and Lance's tutoring sessions. He _could_ tell that they weren't going well. In class they either ignored each other or glared at each other, and when he did get a rare chance to ask Keith about it, all Keith would say was, “I'm having patience.”

Shiro exercised some of his own, and went back to trying to keep on top of his own workload.

In combat warmup, in the shower, in the vast distances between stars as his mind searched near and far for the missing Kerberos crew, his attention turned back again and again to Hunk and Lance: or more specifically, what to tell them. Keith and Pidge both had their reasons to believe him, or at least give him the benefit of the doubt. Lance, Shiro knew, had had a bit of a hero-worship thing going on in his original timeline, but Shiro doubted that would carry over to somebody who'd had a mental breakdown and failed out of an important mission. Even if it had, he was pretty sure he'd used up whatever good will Lance might have had by sticking him with Keith. Meanwhile, Hunk was just too sensible to swallow a story about time-travelling and aliens unless he was presented with proof.

Patience, he reminded himself. He needed to give Pidge time to find the signal. Once he had proof, he could try to explain it to them.

  


Over the next month he rarely got the chance to check in with Pidge and see if she'd picked up anything of use. The work he was doing on tweaking the sims snowballed as Garrison higher-ups suddenly realized that just by doubling the size of this year's incoming class, they _hadn't_ doubled the number of cadets who'd were capable of flying at a fighter-class level. He was stuck in endless committee meetings – all of which had to occur outside of regular workday hours – about how to fix the problem, during which he had to explain over and over that no, his teaching style might be producing somewhat better results than previous years but it wasn't revolutionary, and that if they wanted to double the number of cadets then they'd need to double the number of simulators. Iverson occasionally showed up to these meetings himself, ready to argue the details of each sim problem to death, and that was always particularly fun.

Garrison students were, on the whole, highly motivated and self-sufficient, but a lack of lab or sim time had an impact on practical skills and so far the boom class was faring poorly. Shiro tended not to socialize, but even he'd heard complaints about the lack of one-on-one time from those instructors: now he got to hear all about it in meetings that often stretched to near midnight, as everyone debated how to maximize what resources they had while a new simulator complex was built.

The ever-present question of _why_ it was suddenly so important to double class sizes went unanswered, garnering uncomfortable looks from officers with higher security clearance until even the most socially dense of the professors stopped asking.

With meetings to eat up all his time, he didn't get a chance to check on Pidge beyond occasionally asking her a vague question at the end of a sims class, but at least she was able to give him a yes or no (no, always no) answer about whether she'd found the signal. Perhaps it was better that she hadn't found it, yet: it gave them more time. Keith and Lance were both performing well in class – Keith was performing exceptionally, by the standard of anyone except Keith – but they didn't get along and Lance still wasn't settling down. The brief summaries of the simulator activity were all that Shiro had time to read, and they told him nothing. So despite his resolve to be patient, when one of his evening meetings got cancelled at the last minute, he jumped at the chance to observe them in person.

When he got to the observation deck, he found that it was already occupied by one of the second-year instructors. He recognized her from the endless meetings – Irma Cornhouse? Yellowhouse? – and gave her a nod. On the screens, Keith, playing comms officer, was coaching Lance through a sling-shot approach with limited nav displays. The sound was off, but his expression said enough, tired and flat.

“Shirogane,” the other instructor said. “So you're why I can't get extra sim time for my students.”

“This sim's a bit advanced for the second-years.”

“Not at the rate that Iverson wants them to progress.” She eyed him, her eyes flicking up to his hair in a way that he still saw a lot in the halls, but rarely anymore when he was having an actual conversation. “Kogane's the most talented kid we've ever seen. He doesn't need the extra time.”

“He's tutoring a classmate.”

“If the classmate's not up to snuff, he should be moved into a lower stream.”

“McClain's good enough for fighter-class. But he can be much better.” Shiro crossed his arms and leaned against the wall, ignoring the way that Keith and Lance were now glaring at each other on the screens. “I booked this all back before winter break.”

“Give me Monday and Thursday evenings. I've got a dozen kids who could benefit from the time.”

“Priority's always gone to third- and fourth-year students for these sims.”

“Your other students book maybe one extra session a week. You're playing favourites.”

It was impossible to deny that one. Shiro shrugged. “You're not gonna do your students any favours by trying to throw them in the deep end too soon. That's half of what I'm trying to correct here.” He nodded toward the screens, where Lance was now shouting at Keith, a picture of silent rage in motion. “Speaking of which, I should go... fix that.”

The simulator shut off automatically when Shiro tapped his instructor's passcard against the outer controls, and the giant mechanical arms responsible for tilting the shuttle back and forth halted, then returned to their neutral positions with a smooth grace entirely unlike the jerky way that the shuttle had been bouncing around a moment before. Shiro jogged up the stairs and keyed the hatch open, ducking through as soon as it hissed sideways.

“Cadets,” he said, taking in the pair of them. Lance's fingers were white on the controls. Keith looked one moment away from an aneurism. “Kogane, dismissed.”

“Sh – sir,” said Keith, sounding stricken.

He made his voice gentler. “I'll speak with you tomorrow. Dismissed.”

Shiro waited until the door hatch had closed behind Keith, then sat down in the engineer's chair. Lance's gaze was fixed to his controls, but Shiro could feel him watching every movement out of the corner of his eye. _Composure_ , Shiro thought, and let himself relax into the chair.

“It's been a long time since I've actually sat in one of these,” he remarked. He'd graduated, done a year of smaller missions, and there'd been months of prep for Kerberos – but then it had been all the real thing, and then... nothing human at all. Then this. He was expected to observe and correct, not to demonstrate. “I wonder if I've gotten rusty.”

That got Lance to look at him, at least, with clear surprise. From Lance's perspective, of course, last year Shiro had been the hot-shot Kerberos pilot, even if now he was just a washed-up instructor.

“I wanted you two to work together because you had a lot to learn from each other. Keith seems to have gotten it, but I might have done you a disservice,” Shiro confessed.

“What's he learned from me?” Lance asked. There was an ugly, inward-directed bitterness to the question.

“Patience.”

Lance, already low, deflated entirely.

Shiro waited.

“I can't be as good as him,” Lance said in a small, miserable voice. “I'm just... not that great a pilot.”

“Neither am I.”

“What?”

“Keith has an exceptional talent for flying. He's broken records. He's probably the best in the world of our entire generation. And none of that matters a damn bit if he can't get to where he's supposed to be because his nav data's screwed up and he won't straighten out long enough for his comms officer to get new data.”

Lance flushed dark and said defensively, “He was being slow.”

“Yes, he was. He's not a real comms officer.” They'd all cross-trained a bit in second-year, and Shiro could well remember Keith's frustration with being anything except a pilot. “But it's still better than if you had to do it _and_ fly at the same time. He needed your support and you weren't giving it to him.”

“I was trying!”

“You were trying to fly better than him,” Shiro said gently. “That's different from trying to fly better _for_ him.”

Lance slumped again, but he at least looked thoughtful this time. Shiro let it sit, hoping it would sink in. He hadn't been there when Lance had started flying the Red Lion. He didn't know exactly how the switch had played out, didn't have a map for how to get Lance there.

His phone buzzed, and Shiro stifled a groan as he pulled it out to check and saw that the number was restricted. That meant military, and the only times he got calls in the evening from military lines these days were when meetings were rescheduled. “Shirogane here.”

“ _Where are you?”_ asked Pidge. Her voice was high and breathless, and Shiro stood up, heading for the hatch at once, giving Lance a distracted nod of dismissal.

“Simulator. Why?”

“ _I found it. So has the Garrison.”_

“What? How?”

“ _A whole convoy left earlier this evening, peeled out in a rush – I got into their comms just now, they're talking about a signal and excavations for an_ artifact. _The signal they have looks like a rad signature.”_

“Do you have coordinates?”

“ _Yeah. I'm nearly at the garage. You can drive, right?”_

“Yes. Just hang on. I'll be there in a second.” He needed to get Keith first. Shiro broke into a jog, ignoring the other people in the halls as he dodged around them. Now that he thought about it, the halls _were_ a lot less crowded than they should have been for this time. The cancelled meeting – damn it. The Garrison had found something. The Garrison had found the Blue Lion.

He was halfway to the cadets' dorms when the lockdown alarm went off. Doors began to slam shut. Shiro put his head down and sprinted, but by the time he made it to the main atrium the doors were already locked. He jiggled the handle fruitlessly and, for the first time in a long time, really missed his prosthetic.

There were footsteps behind him, only audible during the pause between each blast of the alarm. Shiro turned and saw a group of four MPs approaching down another hall, slowing from a job into a walk as they got closer. “Lt. Shirogane?” one called. “We need you to come with us.”

Shiro took them in at a glance. Sidearms, currently holstered. One had a sheath for a knife in his boot. Another had a taser on her belt. All of their boots and pants were coated with the red dust of the desert. All of them looked grim.

Behind them, disappearing around a corner, was the woman whose profile he'd been searching for ever since the incident in Iverson's office.

“What's this about?” Shiro asked, stepping toward the one who'd spoken. He kept his hands by his side.

When the MP reached for him, Shiro was faster.

He grabbed the reaching arm and twisted as he pulled, bringing the man close enough to be used as a shield – and, yes, out came the taser and two sidearms. Shiro shoved forward, throwing his captive into one of the gunmen and ducking aside from the aim of the other, closing in with a grab that dislocated the guy's elbow and shoulder. The woman with the taser fired and Shiro dropped out of the way, rolling aside and kicking in the knee of the leader as he tried to recover, then following it up with a knee to the gut that left the guy on the ground, retching. Now without her taser, the woman went for her sidearm, and Shiro launched himself at her, tackling her around the knees and bringing her down, just as the remaining uninjured MP fired.

The sound was deafening at close range, but if it hit, Shiro didn't feel it. He let himself roll and keep rolling, using momentum and the advantage of his greater mass to fling the woman at her compatriot. The man dodged aside, but Shiro was still coming, and he swept out the guy's feet and stomped on his hand, eliciting a scream as bones crunched. The gun went spinning down length of the atrium.

A hand closed around his ankle – the leader, trying to get back into the fight. Shiro kicked him aside and intercepted the woman before she could reclaim one of the dropped guns, kicking it behind a potted tree and breaking her arm in two places. He turned back again in time to step on the remaining gun, just out of reach of the leader's fingers.

Shiro's gaze flicked up to the corridor they'd come down. There was no sign of the rankless woman now.

“What were your orders?” he demanded, and got a glare for his efforts. Well. That was fine. Shiro crouched and picked up the gun. The safety was already off.

“Not so harmless as you claimed, eh, Shiro?” asked another voice, ringing off of the Atrium walls.

Shiro had stood and turned before the speaker finished the sentence, but then he froze. It her. He knew it was her, knew her voice despite only encountering her that once, but that wasn't what froze him. She'd stepped out of a side hallway, and Lance was standing in front of her, one arm twisted up behind his back and the beginnings of a black eye. One of her hands had a grip on Lance.

The other had a gun to Lance's head.

“You have some explaining to do,” she said again, her voice calm, almost kind.

“Let him go.”

“I don't think so. Put the gun down, _Lieutenant_ , or I will shoot him in the head.”

Shiro's vision tunnelled. Lance was trying to mouth something at him, but he couldn't make it out. All his focus was on her. “I will take you apart.”

“If you could hit me without hitting him, you'd already have taken your shot. Put the gun down, Shiro.”

Damn her. If he and Lance had been in opposite places – Lance was a much better shot even before he'd started paladin training, and Shiro probably could have gotten away from a hold like that. But they weren't, and Shiro had good natural aim but he'd never worked at shooting much. He wasn't good enough to risk it.

The gunshot had to have been heard by somebody else. They were in lockdown. Security would be on their way, and surely if they saw an officer pointing a gun at a cadet –

“I'm going to count down from five. At one, I will shoot him. Five.”

“Wait – ”

“Four. Thr – ”

“Alright!” Shiro raised his hands, the gun pointing toward the roof. “Alright, you win. I'm putting it down.”

“Shiro, no – ” Lance's protest choked off as the woman did something that Shiro couldn't see.

He got the safety on one-handed, and let the gun fall to the ground. He was terrible at guns, anyway. He needed to get close enough to disarm her. If he _could_ trade places with Lance –

“Good. Cadet, I'm going to release your arm now. You will remain standing where you are. If you move, I'll shoot you in the back of your head. You will die. Do you understand me?”

Lance bit his lip. He looked scared, but he was also thinking. That could be a good thing or a bad thing.

“Do as she says,” Shiro ordered, trying to keep his own fear from showing.

Reluctantly, Lance said, “Yeah.”

“Good.” Lance stumbled forward a bit as she released whatever grip she'd had on him. The next moment, she dropped something to the floor, and kicked it toward Shiro. “Put that on.”

Moving as slowly as he could, Shiro picked it up, and held it between two fingers. It was a wide ring of metal, with a battery pack on one side giving it a lop-sided shape. “What is this?”

“Something like a mood balancer. You're familiar with those. Put it on.”

 _No, no, no._ They weren't the Galra. She wasn't Galra. He'd die before he'd let himself be captured by the empire again, but this wasn't that. And Lance had a gun to his head.

Hands shaking, Shiro lifted it, and let it drop over his head. He had a moment to think that it wasn't working. Then the band tightened into a vise-like grip, and every fear and worry he had dropped away from him. His heartbeat slowed. In front of him stood two people, one pointing the gun at the other, but it was no more real than a black-and-white silhouette on a TV screen.

Pressure. Sensation. He was aware of these things, but they weren't real. A figure approached and pulled at his arms. Shiro watched it like he would have a Saturday morning cartoon: out of the corner of his eye, with a fraction of his attention.

Other figures appeared on the screen. Dialogue was spoken. One pulled up the Shiro-puppet and attempted to direct its limbs, but those were rather floppy. They loaded it onto a board instead and carried it. There were a lot of words. Motion, as the figures ran around and did unimportant things. The Shiro-puppet was pulled off of the board and put in a chair. A light shone, sending the screen white. Someone pulled something from its forehead.

Shiro jerked back to himself, gagging at the sensation of _flesh bone saliva_ pouring back into him. The disconnect vanished like it had never been. His throat was parched, his eyes were gritty, and there were handcuffs around his wrists, holding them behind the back of the metal folding chair and wrenching his shoulders as he dry-heaved. He sucked in air, forcing himself to let it out slower lest he start hyperventilating.

“Water?” A water bottle was thrust under his nose. He looked up and saw the rankless woman looking down at him. Only, her shoulder-tabs weren't missing anymore. She bore the engraved sunbursts of an admiral.

“I'll pass,” Shiro croaked. His voice was barely audible, and not just because of dehydration. There was a continual roar in the background, like a jet warming up its engines: steady and deep, without the higher whine of high speed.

“After the fuck-up last time, it's not drugged.” The admiral pitched her voice easily over the background roar. She pulled the water bottle back and took a drink from it herself, then shrugged at Shiro's unimpressed expression and set it down. “You can't tell me anything if you're in cardiac arrest.”

Shiro looked around. There wasn't much to see. The room was small, maybe ten by ten, and there was him, the chair, a metal folding table, and another folding chair on the opposite side. On the opposite door, on either side of the single door into the room, were two guards who lacked badges marking them as MPs, but made up for it by holding sub-machine guns. Besides the water bottle, there was a tablet on the table, in front of the other chair.

The admiral walked around to her chair and sat down. “Tell me about Voltron.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

She tapped at the tablet a couple times. A moment later, a sound file started playing his own voice: _“_ _Voltron is a weapon, a defender. It's made up of the five lions. The lions are... they're not just ships.”_

She hit pause.

“I've got this special ability, Lieutenant. I can tell when people are lying. All those little tells people make – they stand out to me like a neon sign. I knew you were bullshitting me the first time you tried playing innocent, so I kept a close eye on you, all your usual haunts... including that roof you're so fond of.

“Granted, the time-travel story sounded pretty nuts. But I took a gamble on looking for that signal, and there it was, just where you said it would be. So, Shiro. I think it's time you started talking.”

Shiro stared at her. Part of him wanted to beg – part of him was screaming, _give her what she wants oh god give her what she wants._ But the rest of him had long since learned to ignore that voice. He would scream if he had to, but he wouldn't give in.

_Delay. Plan. Escape._

“What did you do to Lance?”

“Cadet McLain? He's around. He's one of your five pilots, isn't he? We're not letting him out of our sight.”

“He doesn't know anything.”

“That I do believe. But Katie and Keith, they're a different story, aren't they? You told them what was going on.”

“Not really.”

“Interesting. Why not?”

Shiro stayed silent. The reason was stupid, anyway. It was just – it was painful. Cowardly, he'd avoided it, justifying it by thinking he'd have time to explain later.

The admiral leaned forward, tapping her fingers against the table until he looked at her straight-on again. There was no sign of mercy or understanding in her dark eyes. There was nothing there at all. “Understand this, Lieutenant. We're aware you have considerable knowledge about the Galra and Voltron. You learned that somehow, and it wasn't through the Garrison. That information could be critical to the defence of Earth. If you withhold it, that is treason. If you've gone over to the side of the aliens, that's treason. If you're not really Lt. Takashi Shirogane, human – well, that might not be treason, but I promise you, you'll be wishing it was by the time I'm done with you.”

“I thought you could tell when people were lying.”

Her eyes sparkled. “I've never gone up against an alien in a human skin-suit before. I can't be sure how I'll do.”

“I want to see the cadets, first. I don't trust you.”

“That's not how this works. You're not in a position to bargain, Shiro. We have the lion. We'll figure Voltron out sooner or later. Cooperate, and earn some goodwill – then we'll see.”

“How'd you get past the shield?”

She paused. “You _do_ know a lot about Voltron.”

“I do. The others?”

“If you cooperate, you'll be allowed to see them.”

“I want some reassurance. I'm not the one who held a gun to a cadet's head.”

“Do you want the Galra to have the chance to hold a gun to all of Earth?”

Shiro sat back. He'd been unconsciously leaning forward, and now his shoulders were aching from the strain. Hope and worry entwined in his chest. The Garrison had nothing to lose by letting him see that the others were alright. So either they weren't alright – and he just had to hope that they wanted Voltron too badly to risk that – or maybe, just maybe, the Garrison hadn't managed to capture them all. Pidge had already been on alert when the alarm had gone off. Keith knew not to trust the Garrison. Hunk... damn, this was a hell of a way for him to find out. He hoped it hadn't been as bad as Lance's.

“If it's the Galra you wanted to know about, you could have just asked,” he told her, and started talking.

All the discoveries the team had made about the Galra empire, all the information they'd wheedled out, that he'd put in his report for Commander Holt to give to the Garrison: he didn't mind giving her that. It was already in his head, complete with a table of contents. He started with an overview of the military hierarchy. His voice quickly went from rasping to inaudible, and at the admiral's solicitous suggestion, he accepted the next offer of water. She even uncuffed his arms for him, although she re-cuffed one wrist to the table instead. He nodded his thanks and went back to reciting facts while she listened. She asked no questions. It was all a preliminary briefing, and the questions would come after he'd finished.

Joke was on her: that report had been four hundred pages long, and he was skipping the summaries.

He wasn't sure how long had passed before the admiral finally held up her hand, then pulled a buzzing phone from her pocket. Whatever was on the screen, her face didn't so much as twitch while she read it, but when she looked back at him she said, “I'm afraid I have to step out. Please continue with your statement, Lieutenant. The mics will pick it up.”

“I've cooperated. I'd like to see the others. Ma'am.”

She snorted. “Don't treat me like an idiot. Tell me about the weapon, Shirogane. Then we'll see.” She left, pausing only long enough for the door to unlock. It re-locked behind her, leaving Shiro with the two SMG-carrying guards.

He could probably shoot out a lock with one of those.

Shiro tipped his head back, his eyes sliding shut as he fell. Galaxies rushed past, at first with a hint of wobbliness before his perception steadied. A deep ache spread through him, like he'd overtaxed every muscle – except that he had no muscles, here.

Whatever that mood suppressor was, it apparently affected quintessence. Huh. He hadn't gotten anywhere near the Druids during his rambling earlier, between figuring the whole 'alien space magic' thing was going to be a hard sell, and... other reasons. But apparently the Garrison had stumbled onto something. He'd have to try to grab one of the things, so Pidge or Allura could study it later.

For now he had a different goal. He let himself drift along the arms of an unknown spiral galaxy until its black hole pulled him in, and then he latched on to a binary star going hypervelocity as its twin was devoured. It carried him outward and onward until he left it behind, expanding beyond the reach of any star, and hit the stream of a quasar with enough force to daze even a spirit. It threw him outbound to the far reaches of the universe, where the Black Lion prowled.

This time, he had a favour to ask of her.

The Black Lion was cold, disagreeable. It had been so long since she had basked in the warmth of family. They had been sundered, and she had done as asked and kept apart, knowing she was the only one of them who could have found the others. She had allowed them to leave her, had kept them separate, and now he asked that she overturn that long age of sacrifice.

 _Blue is already calling,_ Shiro told her, and shared that pull, the memories of the carved lions and the sheer improbability of five potential paladins converging in one location. _She knows it's time._

Black's tail lashed, a dark whip ten million light years long. Wings spread, occluding the brilliance from the centre of the universe, shading out those trillion trillion stars. Shiro had made a promise to her, and hadn't kept it yet: he had not brought her a new black paladin.

 _I'm working on it,_ Shiro conveyed tiredly. His physical form had more limitations than hers did. He shared Keith's progress with her, a snapshot of learned patience.

That was not a great deal of patience, the Black Lion intimated, furling her wings in a manner that could almost be called sulky.

_Ten thousand years is a long time. I know that – better, now. I'm sorry. It won't be long._

Golden eyes stared into him. Yes, she knew. _Oh._ He reached out, offering what comfort he could, as the reason for her moodiness became apparent to him. She knew all too well. Change was coming. The empire would fall. For ten thousand years, a faint hope had carried her through, and now she must abandon it: her old paladin would never repent, never return to her, remorseful.

 _I'm sorry._ Shiro wrapped himself around her, a thin, gossamer shadow compared to her luminous darkness.

Her own sorrow could drown galactic clusters. The end was coming. There was no putting it off.

The end was now.

She stood on stiff feet, raised her muzzle, and _roared._

It was a sound-yet-not-sound that rattled the boundaries of the universe. Galaxies quivered as they spun before righting; stars trembled, ejecting massive plums of plasma. It washed through nebulas, reshaping their edges. The titanic creatures of the deep void, the weblums, the icharythids, the balmera, all paused in their voyages. Diamond planets cracked.

 _I AM AWAKE,_ said that roar. _I AM HERE._

 _I_ AM!

Across that vast universe, three planets shook, as the guardians within stirred and woke. On a fourth planet, the guardian was already awake.

The Black Lion shook herself like a wet cat, shedding Shiro from his hold. He reformed his idea of himself nearby, assuming a questioning shape. She pounced, scruffed him like a kitten, and with one bound took them not _outside_ the universe but _below_ , to that flat world of the eternal eclipse, where he'd first encountered the Black Lion's form, and where he'd spent his first eternity, after death, weak and cradled against the Black Lion's side.

There was another form there now: a massive Blue lion. Shiro found himself trying to occupy a human form almost out of habit, in this place, but without a physical skin to force it he couldn't condense himself in such a fashion. They both dwarfed him anyway, titans of spirit denser than neutron stars.

 _Your paladin is near,_ he said, and got the impression back that he wasn't telling Blue anything she didn't already know. _But we've both been captured by people who... well, they're not friendly._ Again, something she already knew. She wasn't cold the way Black could be. Her worry filled the space around her, warping the astral lines into blue and silver icicles, tempered by a boundless compassion. Her call rang through him, and he caught an echo of a presence that he recognized as familiar. Curious, impetuous, friendly, selfish and self-sacrificing alike: Lance, through and through.

This one, the Blue Lion observed fondly, was nearly ready to take up the Red Lion's challenge, but she would keep him for a while yet – if only she could have him in the first place. He had not yet greeted her. She could sense him out there as she could sense the possibility of a dawn, but she could not simply locate him and go to him before he was hers.

 _Does this help?_ Shiro asked, and offered up his own impressions of Lance, crisp and clear: their conversation in the simulator, the defiant look on his face as Shiro had ordered him to stay still, obey the admiral; the glee on his face after a successful sim, and the ill-concealed dejection when he failed. There were memories of what Lance could become: a sharp-shooter, still doubting; a second-in-command, grown more confident, more steady. He had blossomed beneath Blue's guidance, bloomed further with Red's.

The Blue Lion appreciated Shiro's memories. The Black Lion, a looming observer in the background, offered only the impression of a starless void. Gently, Blue placed her massive front paws on either side of Shiro's astral form, and lowered her head until she could nudge him with her nose. The touch conveyed a spark of overwhelming fondness. He was a very alien thing to her, and yet she could see how much he cared. But it wasn't that she needed memories of Lance. _Lance_ needed memories of _her_.

She could not see through Lance's eyes without him first taking a glimpse through hers.

 _Oh,_ said Shiro, crestfallen.

The Blue Lion raised her head and padded away, her enormous paws landing as delicately as a butterfly's wings upon the mirrored surface that passed for ground in this place. She settled beside the Black Lion, small only in comparison to Black's bulk, and leaned against her elder sibling. Shiro directed his attention away, feeling something pass between the two that was entirely over his head and which he wouldn't have dared intrude upon even if he could have. Around him, the flat plane rippled. Something was shaking his physical body, trying to demand his attention. Now that he thought about it, he realized it had been going on for some time – he simply hadn't noticed, all his attention bound up in the Lions.

Blue's attention was back on him, even as another piece of her stayed beside Black. She hadn't noticed his physical form before – but it was very near her own, wasn't it? Her curiosity pried at Shiro's boundaries, although not indelicately.

 _Sure,_ said Shiro, rippling the shape of himself into a shrug. He let the tug of physical sensation pull him upward, falling back to himself. Blue stayed with him, her quintessence surging around his own.

He was of a similar physical size to a paladin, Blue conveyed wistfully. And his memories carried such echoes. If only his quintessence was not so expansive as a lion's, as thin as a wisp – if it had all been back within its proper shape and bounds, he'd have made her sister's heart whole again. As it was, he began to slip back into himself, and Blue began to lose her grip on him.

As Shiro fell back into his body, his last impression was that she'd had a sudden idea.

Then all such thoughts were driven from his head by an absolutely _awful_ smell. It hammered into his nose, like a gallon of jalapenos had been used as dirty cat litter. His body tried to cough, sneeze, and gag all at once, with the result being that mostly he choked. Involuntary tears streamed down his face. “Gyuh!”

The smell instantly reduced, though hints of it remained, enough to still be sharply unpleasant. Through watering eyes, he could see somebody standing up and capping a bottle. He tried to sit up, to raise an arm to rub at his face, and was stymied immediately in both attempts when the guards on either side of him slammed his arms back down against the ground.

Shiro let his head rest back against the carpet as he struggled to breathe. Like this, he could feel the earlier noise, vibrating up through the floor. It was lower in pitch, now. Grinding.

Then it was overwhelmed, drowned out as the Blue Lion's call rose into a massive, unending growl. It thrummed through his head and heart, making his spine shiver. The hands on his arms and shoulders tightened painfully, as all three of his guards turned to look in the same direction. The call had become a beacon.

“What is that?” breathed the guard on his left. She shifted her grip unconsciously, and the pin that she'd had him in vanished when she no longer had her hand in the correct position to offer leverage. “I can hear...”

Shiro felt the next increase in his bones first, the growl building in tone and timbre. The entire room began to shake, walls and floor trembling.

“Tell the admiral to let Cadet McLain go to the Lion,” he said. He only got half their attention: Blue's call was too loud. “Listen to me!”

The one who'd had the smelling salts tapped his earpiece. “Kregann for Admiral Kabirii, we have squawking, over.”

Shiro warned, “You're not gonna like what happens if he doesn't go now, just tell her!”

“What happens?”

The crescendo hit peak, and the Blue Lion's growl became a roar. All three of Shiro's guards flinched, ducking away from that the direction. The one on Shiro's right let go entirely, bringing his arms up to shield his face as if from a blast. The Blue Lion's roar wasn't the blast of the silent void, like Black's: hers was _audible_ , shaking the earth as much as it would have if she'd been stalking forward, slamming each paw down deliberately. It was the roar of the incoming ocean, a tsunami heading straight for you.

Shiro lashed out with his legs, catching the lead guard and bringing him down, while at the same time his right hand went up, fist straight into the chin of the guard on his right. That one dropped like a stone. The woman started to react, but she was dazed and moving slow. He punched her in the nose, flipped to his feet, and knocked both her and the lead guard out cold as well.

No time to pause and catch his breath. Shiro grabbed one of the SMGs and slung it over his shoulder, then spun and planted his boot squarely beneath the handle of the door. His foot went clean through, nearly trapping his leg, and he hastily withdrew, then reached a hand through and flicked the lock.

He exited gun first into an even tinier room – five by ten feet, and that was all – and was immediately confronted with another door, also locked, and considerably more resilient than the first. Its hinges did not, however, hold out against a short burst from the gun, and then Shiro was stepping out into the cool dry air of the desert.

In his head, Blue's roar had dimmed to – well, to a dull roar. In front of him was a hastily assembled base: at least a dozen enormous but portable trailer-buildings, some still loaded on flatbed trucks, others offloaded onto short piles. Dozens of personnel ran every which way between them, black-clad not-MPs, scientists, and other military personnel – some whom Shiro recognized. They were on the last bit of flat ground in the mouth of a canyon, the whole area lit up by floodlights, drowning out the stars. He could still hear them, in his head, a song every bit as loud as Blue's command.

Despite her continuing call, Shiro's exit hadn't gone unnoticed. A guard turned toward him, raising a gun, while scientists shied away. Shiro ducked just as the chatter of automatic fire rang out. Somebody started screaming. It was drowned out by other cries, too many people all shouting at once for anything to be heard, even if Blue's call had quieted somewhat.

The cliffs on one side exploded into fire. Three detonations, unevenly spaced, sent boulders hurtling downward, smashing into a haphazard line of parked vehicles on that side. Shiro didn't pause: he turned and sprinted, ducking behind a building. He recognized those tactics. He pressed himself into the building's shadow, searching, and sure enough, there were two figures skidding down the gentler slope on the opposite side, before the canyon narrowed.

Shiro broke into a run and intercepted Keith and Hunk just before the last trailer, and would have taken a punch to the face if he hadn't side-stepped and blocked Hunk's flailing arm. “Easy!” he said, raising his voice to be heard above Blue's call and the horns and alarms going off all over the base.

“Shiro! You got out,” Keith said, yanking down the bandana he'd tied to crudely cover his face.

Shiro gave him a quick once-over. No visible injuries, thank god. “You never got caught at all,” he said, approving.

Keith gave him a small smile, then immediately turned serious again as Hunk said urgently, “They've got Lance in the lab building in the middle of camp.”

“Pidge?”

“She's on demolitions and distractions. Gonna meet us nearer into the cave.”

“Good.” Shiro turned, assessing. The base was starting to get organized, now. They were in shadow beside their current trailer, but there were way too many people with way too many guns still in the centre of everything, especially around the building that Hunk pointed at. “That's gonna be a tough nut to crack.”

“It's happening again,” Hunk squeaked.

Blue's call built, starting in Shiro's bones and working outward to his skin. This time he couldn't resist staring in the direction of the cavern, either. The ground was shaking. Everyone in the camp was staring toward the Blue Lion like she was their own personal Polaris. Shiro felt her call wash over him, so strongly that he felt himself slipping and falling, spiralling out of his body not toward the stars, but toward her.

His perception shifted as sight vanished. Ahead Blue had made herself a beacon so brilliant that the light of suns would be dim beside her. Her call was a pillar of radiance – aimed precisely outward. Everything that they were feeling, every shake of the ground, all of it was little more than the ripples of passage caused by that massive energy beam.

Against his will, Shiro slid closer. If he fell into that well of power, it'd squash him as flat as if Black really had stepped on him. But the longing for connection was impossible to resist. Ten thousand years, and Blue, as social a creature as they came, had stayed alone, believing she must. That time was over and she would wait no more. Her paladin was in danger, and could not come to her, but there were other paladins here, free to find a Lion, if only the Lion would have them.

Her call was as loud as it had to be to cross half the universe, to reach the one Lion who could cross physical space like thought: _COME HERE COME HERE COME HERE COME HERE COME HERE_

Shiro obeyed.

For a moment he overlapped the Blue Lion, a flash of sharing souls as he only ever had with Black.

The Blue Lion startled and reared up to her hind legs, shaking the cavern she inhabited. She'd felt a glimpse of the shadow-being, and then, like mist before the sun, he was gone. She could not tell where: he could stretch across the universe as her elder sister could, and she had no bond by which to find him. Yet she knew she'd pulled him in, as she should not have been able to do to any proper physical being, nor any born spirit. The friendly shadow-being had comforted her elder sister, roused her to seek out Blue after spending so long separated. He had tried to help Blue find her new paladin. Now Blue feared she had hurt him.

The worry infected her beacon, sending it into nauseating pulsations, before, too late, she shut it off, her righteous demand to her elder sister gone unanswered. But the shadow-being did not re-appear. Had she – ?

A sigh enveloped her, as expansive as twilight. A pawful of claws reached out to Blue, hooked something within her, and yanked.

Shiro came back to awareness of himself as a loose, amorphous thing dangling from the end of the Black Lion's claws. Gently – for her – the Black Lion raised her head and blew, a single long exhale of extra-solar wind.

Slamming into back to his physical form didn't help: he felt like an elephant had stepped on him. He groaned, and immediately regretted moving even that much.

“Shiro!”

“Are you okay?”

“Look,” Shiro tried to say. Mostly he would up coughing. He wouldn't have been heard over all the noise coming from the rest of the camp, anyway. In the sudden absence of Blue's call, the humans seemed to be trying to make up the rest of the noise. He grit his teeth, took a deep breath despite the dizzying sensation, and tried again, pointing. “Keith. Look!”

Keith turned, as did Hunk, both of them craning their heads back. Above, a shadow had blotted out the stars. Massive wings spread, rippled, and then dissolved in a burst of silver light. Keith's jaw dropped open. Hunk swore.

Shiro felt her reluctance wash over him, and clung to the ground to avoid being pulled under. “Come on,” he whispered, audible to no one but himself.

Keith's mouth moved. Shiro couldn't hear the words, but he could see them form on Keith's lips: _The Black Lion._

Reluctance gave way. The Black Lion dropped, landing in a crouch. The floodlights lit her, but she glowed with her own light, too, her eyes and the tips of her wings painfully bright. They left halos in Shiro's vision.

“Go, Keith.”

“But – ” Keith shot Shiro a torn look.

Shiro smiled. “Time to be great. You promised.”

“Wait,” said Hunk, as Keith stood. Keith had eyes on the Lion now, and wasn't listening. “Shiro – what is that gonna – ” The rest of his words faded into buzzing.

 _I never got to show you Earth, in my timeline,_ Shiro thought, directing it at Black. He didn't know if it made it to her. It didn't matter. He felt bruised all over, his quintessence shredded, like it had been put through a micro-sieve. Much of it hadn't made it out the other side.

 _Oh_ , he thought.

He tried to speak, to say something that would reassure Hunk, but unconsciousness claimed him first.


	10. Chapter 10

_From the centre of every white hole, eyes watched him._

_They were always the same eyes._

  


Shiro cracked his eyes open.

Exhaustion weighed him down, a bone-deep ache. He felt scraped thin and hollow. But above him were familiar, beloved faces. Keith's, first of all – younger, unscarred, smiling in relief. Pidge, Lance, and Hunk were all there as well, clustered around him, and a little further back were Allura and Coran, more reserved but still pleased. Above him, the lights were bright with more tones of blue than there would be on earth. This was the Castle's medical bay.

“You made it,” Shiro murmured, smiling.

“We all did,” said Keith, and squeezed Shiro's hand. Shiro hadn't even realized that they were holding hands until he did it. All his limbs were leaden, and slightly strange, like he didn't really belong in this body, or maybe, in any body at all.

Keith added, “You left some stuff out of your explanation,” and there was enough wryness in it to prop Shiro's eyelids open where they'd begun to droop closed.

“Sorry. I couldn't figure out how to say...”

“You should get some more rest,” said Allura, stepping forward and patting Shiro on the shoulder. It was only mildly awkward. “Your readings are all still very low.”

“Coordinates... I can use the nav system...”

But he couldn't see their faces anymore. His eyes had drifted shut, and sleep reclaimed him.

  


He dreamed of dying.

It hadn't been anything like the slow lassitude that infected him now. It had been fast and painful, Zarkon's quintessence lancing through him and burning, atomizing. Then there was nothing, a cradling darkness that he could only recognize as the Black Lion's paws in retrospect. She had bound him tightly at first. Newly dead, newly disembodied, if Black had let go too soon he really would have been lost, scattered, not yet grown to fit his surroundings.

In his dreams, the Black Lion tried to rebind him now, but he was as solid as smoke and she could not gather him back. Shiro clung to his physical body by metaphorical fingertips. If he let go, there would be no returning.

Beyond him, the stars called. It had been so long since he'd floated among them. But he couldn't go yet.

  


When he woke again, Keith was there. Keith was always there for him, no matter the timeline: in this one he wore the black paladin's armor, and Shiro smiled to see it on him. The others came and went. Sometimes Shiro didn't wake fully, just enough to hear them talking. They were all worried. He wasn't improving. He was sleeping for longer and longer.

The next time he woke properly he forced his eyes open and asked for a wrist-computer. Coran promptly lent his own. Shiro fiddled with it until he brought up the navigation console, the Altean setup so familiar and so foreign from anything that had been designed on earth. He entered coordinates from memory: Sam Holt, the Blade of Marmora, Oriande, the Rift, Olkarion. He fell asleep while trying to enter a note about Beta Traz.

When he woke again they were on Olkarion, in one of their hospitals instead of the Castle. Ryner was there, looking down at him with that ever-present compassion.

“The Holts,” he tried to ask, but sleep took him again.

When he next woke with more awareness, Lance was sitting beside him. He bolted upright as soon as he saw Shiro was awake. “Shiro! How are you?”

“Hanging around,” Shiro replied, letting one side of his mouth curl up in a smile. Lance was wearing the red paladin's armour. “You got Red?”

“Yeah, a while ago.” Lance hovered. “Do you need anything? I can call Keith – ”

“Lance... thank you.”

Lance tapped at his wrist computer. “No problem.”

“No, I mean... thank you. I didn't give you anything to go on...”

“They only caught you because of me,” Lance said, face darkening. “You're – you're – it's because I got caught.”

He didn't say _you're dying._ Shiro heard it clearly enough anyway.

“No,” Shiro murmured. Wakefulness was beginning to elude him once again. It was so _tiring_ , to hang on like this, when he could hear the stars calling, their voices drowning out anything Lance might have said. Their voices had been getting stronger for months. “This has been coming... already died once, y'know.”

“What? Shiro!”

He was out again.

In the space beyond the physical Shiro pulled himself together as much as he could, operating on willpower alone. Black nudged him where she could, providing limited aid. It was a slow process, not painful, just... endless. It made clinging to his body harder. Memories slipped through him, passing through the spirit as the body died. But he had an idea, one last ditch attempt to save himself, and he wasn't about to give up _now_. And that meant he had to keep himself together and in one piece, metaphorically if not physically, long enough to make it across the universe, one last time.

Other energy bolstered him, radiating reserve despite how deeply familiar it was to him. _Allura._ She'd gotten to Oriande, then. But he had changed too much for Altean alchemy to transform him back.

_Shiro_ , she told him. _I'm sorry. I can't do anything more._

_It's enough,_ he tried to reply, but he lacked the strength.

He woke again with Keith there, red jacket and all. It'd been a while since he'd worn that outfit...

“Shiro,” said Keith. His voice was wet.

“Keith.” Shiro raised a hand, clumsily, toward his shoulder, but he was weak and uncoordinated as a kitten and his fingers barely brushed Keith's cheek instead. “'M sorry... didn't mean to leave you.”

“You haven't left yet. Please. Shiro... don't go.”

“Keith. It's not... this isn't me.” He jabbed a thumb at his own chest. The effort was overwhelming; he could feel sleep pulling him under. “Not giving up. Refuse to die again. Even if it kills me.”

Keith looked stricken. Ah, he'd never appreciated Shiro's sense of humour...

“Ask Black. She knows.” He could feel her now, even like this, even in his physical body. A greater view of the world overlaid his perceptions as his sight failed him. “Keith... so proud of you. Love you.”

Yelling. Keith, in pain. Damn. Shiro would have made this easier for him, if he could. If he'd had more time to explain. He was already slipping under again, back to the struggle of holding on – a struggle he just didn't have the energy for anymore.

_I will never give up._

But sometimes he needed another approach.

Shiro let go of the physical and soared, the dropping of a great weight pushing him higher, higher. The universe beckoned. The stars pulled at him, demanding that like so many countless lives before him, he return to them, be pulled into their bright furnaces. And for so many other souls it would have been right, would have been complete, but his soul had been stretched and shaped and bent out of space and time. There were promises he still had to fulfill, and he wasn't giving up.

Black's wings flared behind him, propelling him forward in their wake, forcing movement when he could barely will any himself. Stars fell away. Galaxies blurred. At the centre of the universe, in the heart of Oriande, a white hole burned.

Two great eyes opened, watching him. For the first time, Shiro didn't look away. That alien gaze was knowing. Familiar. Lit with recognition.

_Please_ , Shiro whispered.

The White Lion of Oriande opened its jaws wide.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is the product of three things:  
> 1) I love time travel tropes  
> 2) I love terrible things happening to Shiro  
> 3) ARGH NO I didn't mean that terrible things should include losing his bond to Black, what the hell, writers D:
> 
> I heard about interview in which it was mentioned that Shiro's lost his bond with Black when I was about a quarter of the way through writing this fic, and my need to wallow kinda derailed anywhere else it might have gone. Er, oops. Well, at least he didn't die? I had one draft where he spent the last six thousand words floating around as an invisible ghost going KEITH NO a lot.
> 
> 08/28: Edited a tiny bit for ranks and such. Too much time in Stargate fandom had me defaulting to Air Force instead of Navy-ish.


End file.
